The news that Worcestershire have released Adrian Shankar from his contract after only 15 days has turned the division 1 strugglers from “point and laugh” candidates to something resembling a full-on laughing stock.  It seems they didn’t bother to actually check whether he could play or not before sticking him in their 1st XI.  So, just in case your dreams of playing county cricket for a living haven’t yet been extinguished by your complete lack of talent or your sizeable beer belly, here’s my blaggers guide to getting that county contract:

Choose your county wisely

Worcestershire aren’t just any county.  They’re special.  They’ve lost pretty much every game so far in county cricket this season.   Their New Road ground floods whenever one of the residents of Hereford takes a shower.  They couldn’t even turn Graeme Hick into a successful test batsman.  Shankar knew what he was doing when he chose them as the victim of his spectacular grift.

You too must scour the country for an inept county that’s desperate for someone, anyone, who wants to play and knows where the box goes.  Other suitable targets include Derbyshire, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire and Yorkshire (preferably you should be able to “prove” – see below – that you come from Yorkshire, and manage a passable Huddersfield accent).

Do some groundwork before you approach your county

Shankar didn’t just wake up one morning and think “I know, I’ll get a job in county cricket today”.  He put in years of leg-work to successfully pull off his blag.  Here’s what you need to do:

• Falsify some paperwork. Preferably your birth certificate (OK, so you don’t look 22, but the piece of paper says you are) and stuff relating to medical problems that explain anyway any annoying career gaps.
• Be brash, be bold, be beautiful. If it sounds fanciful to claim that you were the youngest ever captain of one of the country’s greatest institutions, then so much the better.  It won’t matter if the facts don’t back up your story because if you’ve chosen the right county, they won’t bother to check them anyway.  You are a brand – go sell yourself.
• Get the right references. Job references can be a pain, especially when you’ve never done the jobs you are trying to get references for.  In this situation, there’s only one course of action – make stuff up.  Again, you can quote well known and easily contactable figures within county cricket circles – no county worth it’s salt will actually follow up on any of this.
• Play Sri Lankan cricket all winter. Ok, here you need to get a little bit creative.  You should definitely do this because, hey, Sri Lanka is a nicer place to be in winter than Stockport, but you don’t need to play for a proper Sri Lankan team.  Just some casual matches for an amateur club will do.  But make sure you learn the names of the local pros while you’re there so that you can name-drop them around county cricket circles when you get back.
• Auction yourself for the IPL. You don’t have to give yourself a massive price tag.  You don’t even need to get picked.  Shankar didn’t.  County cricket is so in awe of the IPL that just being listed for auction is enough to impress those chief executives.

Dive in at county cricket’s deep end

Earning your contract isn’t the end of your blag.  Now is when the real work begins.  Rather than feel your way in gently by learning the ropes in the 2nd XI, you need to convince the coaches to stick you straight in the first team.  County cricket is where it’s at, and that’s where you deserve, demand even, to be.  This is where you need to rely on a bit of healthy bluster and force of personality:

Of course I’m ready for first team action.  I’ve just spent a winter abroad breaking records in Sri Lankan domestic cricket.  I’m essentially an overseas player in all but passport.

Or perhaps:

Look, I was a leader at university.  You’ve seen the testimonial I got about being better than John Crawley.  Everyone knows Chris Scott has never yet been wrong about a player.

Because your credentials are so impressive, you shouldn’t even need to practise in the nets before you’re offered a county cricket contract.  Never mind niceties like providing a practical demonstration of your abilities.

Summary

So there you have it.  An easy, three-step guide to blagging your way into county cricket that anyone can follow.  You can thank me when you get picked for England.

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

It looks increasingly possible that Lancashire are the favourites to lift the County Championship this season.  They’ve won five out of six so far, and it would be six out of six were it not for the batting megalith that is Monty Panesar.  This is a pretty good record for a county that is usually out of the running by the time June comes around because rain has wiped out half of their schedule.

Red Rose fans are starting to pinch themselves, and well they might, for it is 61 long years since they last shared the title and 77 since they won it outright.  So here’s a list of things that have happened since that glorious year, 1934, when Lancashire & Lancashire alone were County Champions:

1. The record for the highest test innings has been broken 5 times
2. One day cricket was invented
3. Chris Tavare has scored a century
4. England have won an Ashes series in Australia 5 times
5. 1,669,309 test match runs have been scored
6. 51,574 test match wickets have been taken
7. 16 limited over trophies have been won by Lancashire
8. 14 County Championship titles have been won by Yorkshire (1 shared)
9. Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh have been admitted to test cricket.  South Africa have been excluded and readmitted, and Zimbabwe have been excluded again.
10. England have won a limited overs international tournament

I think we can all agree that it probably is Lancashire’s turn.

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

Surrey v Essex, County Championship Division 2, Whitgift School

Potential is a wonderful thing, but it’s downside is that it often remains that when it ought to be morphing into “achievement”.  For instance, I have long had the “potential” to be very rich indeed but somehow it just hasn’t happened yet.  Every now and again a few extra pounds will poke their head around the door and ask if they can pop in, but they never hang around for longer than it takes to pour a coffee and offer round a plate of digestives.

Graham Napier is one of those cricketers who has long had “potential”.  He can be a very destructive batsmen, as we have seen in the past, so much so that he won himself an IPL contract after a Twenty20 innings against Sussex that puts the best efforts of Kieron Pollard to shame.

Now, he’s done it again, with an astonishingly wonderful* innings against Surrey at Whitgift School.  196 from 130 balls.  19 fours.  16 sixes. In a county championship game.  I should make it clear that I have never been to Whitgift and for all I know the boundaries might be as long as the average back garden, but still…

Napier equalled the first class record for sixes in an innings, set by Andrew Symonds back in 1995.  This is a figure that Alistair Cook would consider almost indecent for his entire career, let alone in one afternoon.  Now here’s the most remarkable stat relating to Napier’s innings:

From the last 29 balls he faced, Napier scored 103 runs.

By way of a further utterly pointless and fatuous England vice-captain comparison, going by his first class career strike rate, Alistair Cook would have scored 15.6 runs from those deliveries.

I’ll just give you a minute to let that sink in…

…

…

The trouble is, and unfortunately this is in part due to a series of injuries, Napier has never been able to progress beyond Essex all-rounder and occasional IPL performer.  It’s a shame, because that sort of hitting might come in useful in the lower order of an England ODI saunter-to-220-and-lose-comfortably kind of scenario.

The result of an inability to progress beyond the occassional display of an unfulfilled potential is that people now think that Napier isn’t quite good enough, that he would flounder against tougher opposition.  That might be so yet, happily for the nay-sayers, it’s increasingly unlikely we will ever be able to find out.

Unless we count Gareth Batty as top-class opposition, in which case a mauling of 15-0-112-0 tells us all we need to know.

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

Lancashire have had a good day on the pitch and a very bad one off it.  Firstly, the Roses match.

Yorkshire’s batting lineup so far this season has been as brittle as something really quite brittle indeed, so it was no surprise that they were bowled out for just 141 at Liverpool.  Most teams have struggled against Lancashire and this was no different.  Farveez “The Roof” Maharoof has, as the papers will no doubt tell us tomorrow, given the Sri Lankan selectors a nudge by taking 4/35.  That’s until they remember that he has a test average of 60 and hasn’t played a test in four years, but don’t let that stop the press from a good nudge story.

Yorkshire, meanwhile, will have disenchanted their support even further with another batting display.  Joe Sayers, previously out of the team due to poor form, top scored with 53.  In reply, Lancashire had made it to 56/1 by the close of play, Steven Moore the only victim.

Meanwhile, off the pitch, the row over the development of Old Trafford has taken another twist with the judgement by the courts to allow Derwent Holdings, who are seeking to block the development in a display of corporate toy/pram related antics, leave to appeal the decision to grant planning permission to the joint Lancashire CCC/Tesco scheme.

Whilst we can chortle at the hilarity of it all (no, really), the financial consequences to Lancashire could be a real thorn in the side for them.  Firstly they may well miss out on the public funding grants if construction is delayed and, secondly, they may struggle to complete the redevelopment of Old Trafford in time to host the Ashes test they have been awarded for 2013.  And that could have a real impact on their viability as a going concern.

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

To say that the start of the season was disappointing would be an understatement – for Somerset it was traumatic.

Two county championship matches, two innings defeats, 50 all out whilst following on against Warwickshire.  Not good – fancy any team scoring less than 300 in any innings at Taunton, let along 50 all out!!  But, since then they’ve won six in a row and counting.

Fifty all out is the kind of total that can ruin form and confidence for weeks, so to respond as quickly as Somerset have suggests a certain amount of mental fortitude.  Undoubtedly their batsmen have found form, and Craig Kieswetter in particular – three centuries and a 95 not out in his last 7 innings in the championship and the CB40.

He’s now injured, but others have also contributed mightily, notably Marcus Trescothick, who scored a double century set up the victory at the Rose Bowl and another century at Chester-le-Street to set up a huge 1st innings total, and Nick Compton, who this afternoon completed a mammoth 254 not out in the same innings against Durham to go alongside another century against the Unicorns.

That they’ve managed to win at Trent Bridge and bowl Hampshire out twice on a moribund track at the Rose Bowl is also testament to their bowling attack.

Somerset were tipped by most at the start of the season, and they now seem to be fulfilling their potential.  Woe betide any who stand in their way…

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

A fourth innings run chase is a pretty good time to make your mark for the first time at any level of cricket.  Having been thrashed by Lancashire in their opening fixture, as is their habit against the Red Rose, Sussex were staring down the barrel again at Chester-le-Street, facing a target of 309 and without key batsmen like Mike Yardy, Matt Prior and Luke Wright.

Step forward Luke Wells.  Playing only his 3rd first class match, the left hander held the innings together and guided Sussex towards their target.  Although he rode his luck, being dropped off the 3rd ball of the 4th day – at a time when quick wickets for Durham could have swung the match their way – and surviving other chances, his 103 will stand him in good stead for the season ahead.

The 20 year old certainly has good pedigree, being the son of former Sussex captain and winner-of-a-single-test-cap Alan Wells.  Stepping out of the shadow of a famous relative and former club favourite is never easy, but a match-winning century is a good way to start.

Sussex have started to produce better homegrown players in recent years, with the likes of Andy Hodd and Ben Brown regularly featuring in the team, and contributing.  So it’s promising to also see Wells taking his chance in the absence of other, higher profile, players and with the likes of Murray Goodwin out of form.  Suddenly, the despair of the Lancashire defeat has been replaced with a certain amount of optimism over Sussex’s chances of surviving in division 1 this season.  Worcestershire were always favourites to go down, but the poor start by Somerset and, to an extent, Yorkshire have increased hope that Sussex won’t be joining their fellow promotees in going straight back down.

Still, there’s a long way to go and next up is the rematch against Lancashire, who have a nasty habit of dismantling Sussex over the years.  This will be the first match at Hove, development work now being completed.

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

We all know that nothing would ever be accomplished at the ECB if it wasn’t for lunch. The dining-halls of power hum to the sound of clinking glasses, cutlery grating on china and of bellies placing an intolerable strain upon shirt buttons.

So it must have been a particularly “extensive and rigorous” lunch (i.e a portion of each dessert) that lead to the decision being taken to not tinker with the format of the County Championship in 2012. Sense, for now, seems to have prevailed.

The reduction in the Twenty20 program to 10 matches instead of 16 at the group stage further hints at a sudden and unexplained outbreak of sanity amongst the county set.

Not that the cure has been universal. Those fever-ridden chaps at Kent have begun complaining vigorously at the loss off three afternoons of income (total: £12.65) that will result from the reduction. As Leg-Side Lizzy points out, Kent’s ratio of wage-bill to on-field success has registered a 10 on the Peter Ridsdale Scale of Fiscal Prudence™, so it’s no surprise that they were the first to break ranks and start bleating.

Yes, some of the smaller counties will lose some revenue, but it is the right decision being taken for the good health of county cricket and the development of our cricketers. The complaints about an excess of cricket have been long and loud, and appear finally to have been heard.

This is all well and good. However, if my continued observance of the results of such lavish lunches has taught me anything, and by golly it has, it’s that one lunch begets another. The ECB has long been fostering a reputation of cricketing tinkerman, adjusting it’s competitions more often than George Osborne has to downgrade his budget forecast.

So, at the very least, we can expect another round of lunches to tackle the vexatious problem of what to do in 2013. By which time that £12.65 will doubtless look mighty tempting.

Footnotes

[1] – Cover image for this post was sourced from Wikimedia

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

The news that Robin Martin-Jenkins is to retire in a few weeks time was greeted with sorrow by Sussex fans, not least because RMJ has been holding the side together in recent weeks.  Bowling 1st or 2nd change, and batting at 8 0r 9, he has been in some of his very best form, with vital innings to shore up a shaky batting lineup and crucial wickets to boost a meagre pace attack.

But now the end is nigh, and a position teaching at Hurstpierpoint College beckons.  It’s not the usual post-sport career path of coaching or media (although RMJ has made forays into the media already), but it’s a career none the less.

It has been a very good, if not glorious cricketing career, and there were times when a call-up to England’s limited overs side was not out of the question.  Hell, they tried almost everyone else.

In domestic cricket the truth is that, behind the mystery of Mushy, the snarling of Grizzly and the relentless run-gettery of Murray Goodwin, RMJ played an important, understated part in much of Sussex’s success of the last ten years, pitching in when needed with vital contributions yet rarely snatching the headlines.

In recent weeks, though, his contributions have been to the fore – 65 and 33* plus 5 wickets in the opening victory over Glamorgan; 5-46 and 64 against Surrey; 102 in the 2nd innings against Gloucestershire; 66* to save the follow on against Worcestershire.

His departure will leave a hole in the Sussex lineup that will be hard to fill.  The seam bowling cupboard has become increasingly bare in recent years after the retirement of Jason Lewry and with James Kirtley used more sparingly in his senior years.

Signing Monty Panesar during the winter was a bold gamble, but with good young spinners in Ollie Raynor and Will Beer, was it really necessary?  I felt at the time that the money would have been better spent on a high quality new-ball bowler.

James Anyon was signed mainly on the basis that he’d taken a few wickets against Sussex in the past, and this leaves a large burden on the shoulders of Yasir Arafat and Corey Colleymore.

Still, that’s an argument for another day, in the meantime let’s enjoy RMJ’s remaining games and salute one of county cricket’s stalwart servants.

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

Anyone doubtful about the difference in standard between the two divisions of the County Championship should take a look at the comparative performances of Sussex over the last 12 months.

Last season Sussex were relegated on a total of 143 points, having won just two of their 16 matches.  So far this season, they have won 3 out of 3 and are well in control in their fourth.  Granted, Sussex have strengthened their bowling attack this season, and it was badly needed, but the difference in quality is substantial.

Languishing in the nether regions of division two at present are two of the biggest counties, with magnificent facilities and plentiful resources.  Both Surrey and Middlesex make big noises about progressing and gaining promotion back to division one, but both are flattering to deceive up to this point.

As everyone knows, Surrey have spent big (in county cricket terms) on recruitment, bringing in Steve Davies and Gareth Batty from Worcestershire, Rory Hamilton-Brown from Sussex as the new captain, and Chris Tremlett from Hampshire, presumably as a non-playing player.

Part of the problem for Surrey is that it puts them on a pedestal for everyone else to aim at.  Not many neutrals would pick Surrey as their second county anyway, due to the aforementioned facilities and resources alloyed with the traditional English preference for the under-dog.  Their pillaging of Worcestershire and prising of RH-B from Hove has meant they are the target of score-settlers and snipers everywhere.  They are the team that most of division 2 will want to beat.

All this is not easy to overcome when your 22 year old captain with 8 first-class matches to his name is trying to lead a team whose senior batsman made his debut the same year that he was born.  Plus the South African fast bowler with an on-field alter-ego and dodgy temper (as I write this, the ECB has announced a two match disciplinary ban for dissent).  And, when the Twenty20 Cup comes around, the Australian all-rounder who has been in more hot water than a lobster in a restaurant.  Then there are the plans to sign Brian Lara for the Twenty20, a retired legend who hasn’t hit a ball in anger in two years.

It’s all a bit Real Madrid, and not surprisingly they have started slowly.  Being thumped by Derbyshire at home is not something to put on your CV, and then Sussex had their revenge in an equally one-sided 10-wicket beating at Hove.  A high-scoring draw against a Worcestershire side devoid of it’s best players from last year was hardly earth-shattering.

They did at least manage a win against Lancashire in the opening match of the Clydesdale Bank 40.  But it’s off the field that they have been making the headlines, even once the season got underway, and that’s never a good sign.

Now, R H-B might turn out to be an inspired choice by Chris Adams, and his batting certainly hasn’t let him down so far, but it’s hard to see meteoric progress happening this season.  If the projekt is going to work out and take Surrey back to the top of English cricket, they will have to stick with it.

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness

Glamour, fireworks, razzmatazz, cheerleaders…all these things and more were in evidence yesterday, and that was just in Lalit Modi’s garden shed.  Meanwhile, in a galaxy somewhat closer to home, the ECB’s Clydesdale Bank 40 got underway with more of a soggy puff in comparison to the IPL’s bang.

Last year the ECB decided that the irrelevant-to-cricket-anywhere-else, two-division Pro40 simply had to go to make room for more Twenty20.  This year, we somehow find a situation where Sussex are defending their Pro40 title in a brand new competition with a different name, sponsors and format, and that was supposed to be only 20 overs per side.

Only at the ECB could they invent something completely new only for it to turn out exactly the same as the thing they were trying to replace.

Mr. Jobs, I have a product idea to pitch to you. I think you’re going to love it.

Great, John, let’s hear it.

Well, it’s a phone.  But not just any phone.  It takes pictures, plays music, connects to the internet, plays games and can have custom applications, or “apps” as I like to call them, loaded in…

Errm…John?

…that users can buy from an online store. And, best of all, it has a touch screen.  It doesn’t even need buttons!! Mr. Jobs, I give you the “myPhone”.

John, you’re fired.

But of course, Giles and chums won’t get fired.  The ECB doesn’t like doing that sort of thing. What they prefer to do instead is, every year, tear up the structure of English domestic cricket and then put it back together again so it looks virtually the same, but with tiny, barely noticeable differences.

English cricket has become like one of those Lego vehicles that you lost the instructions to. No matter how hard you try, it always ends up with an important piece in the wrong place.

Every now and then, just to shake things up a bit, the ECB might bring back some of the things they got rid of a few years ago.

This year will be no different.  Last years changes didn’t end up solving the problem of too much cricket that didn’t leave enough time for the best counties to play in the Champions League (who knew Barcelona had a cricket team?) because, well, nothing much has changed.

Ok, so there isn’t a 50-over competition this year, but nobody will notice if it’s missing.  It’s not like they play 50-over internationals now is it?  We’ll stuff some extra matches into the T20, no-one will know the difference.

None of this is to say that the CB-40 won’t be terribly good fun, but the ECB’s decision-making-process that led to it has been a complete fudge from start to finish.

It has been said (by me, for starters) that this could be the most important decision to be made for English cricket since the decision to switch the county championship to two divisions.  So here are my predictions for the decisions to be made by the ECB for 2011:

• Rule out introduction of 3rd division in County Championship after lots of coughing and throat-clearing heard from Lord’s and the Oval.
• Rule out introduction of conference system for County Championship after lots of use of the word “Americanised”.
• Agree on suspiciously new County Championship.  Two divisions of 9 teams to play 16 matches.
• Window reserved in September for Champions League participants, and announced one week after BCCI switch the Champions League to August.
• Expand the Twenty20 competition to a “spherical-robin” format.
• Oh, and we’d better have a 50-over competition back in, county members keep thinking they’ve gone senile.

Naturally, the time it takes to sort all of this lot out will require a Jolly Good Lunch™ once a week for the entire summer.

Please visit Good Cricket Wicket for more awesomeness