Vicious in the shires

How will sports like football survive if this madness is allowed to continue?

Adam Lyth added the Professional Cricketers' Association player of the year award to his collection of trophies from the 2014 season with team-mate Alex Lees named young player of the year.

Players toil all season, but fans don't really get a sense of the scale of effort involved

Though derided and sometimes ridiculed, county cricket still holds the key for the future of the game in England and if all involved believed in it just a little more, it could produce an even greater harvest

Alfonso Thomas's four in four, carelessness from Gloucestershire and a forgetful Graeme Smith all feature in our alternative review of the 2014 county season

Sussex clinched third place in Division One for the second successive year after a stalemate with Northamptonshire at Wantage Road

At the end of a day marked not by a frenetic run-chase but by the sort of determined batting specifically designed to prevent such dramas, the players shook hands on the draw at 4.21pm at Old Trafford

Yorkshire played like true champions against Somerset at Headingley to take their final LV= County Championship match to the final ball for a draw

Jeetan Patel once again emphasised that he must be one of the best-value overseas players around as Warwickshire finished runners-up with a three-day victory against Durham