Championing the cause

This has been a season of endings for British flannelled tomfoolery, some less mourned than others. For Michael Vaughan and Chris Adams as, respectively, England’s pre-eminent Test and county captain of the decade; for the first-class careers of Darren Gough and Graeme Hick; for Oxford and Cambridge’s inordinately prolonged status as first-class opposition; for the BBC as a serious player in broadcasting cricket. It has also probably marked the beginning of the end, thanks to a court ruling in France, for the Kolpak Era. But someday, one trusts, we will also look back on it as the end of a new beginning. And no, I’m not referring to anyone called Kevin.

Last week, glory be, the ECB, not always the fount of all wisdom, got something wonderfully right. In hiking the rewards for winning next year’s County Championship from its present £100,000 to £500,000, over ten times more than the next fattest domestic prize, it attempted to equip what some regard as a dodo with a pair of working wings. It also took a giant step for cricketkind by sending out a welcome and only slightly overdue message.

Yes, it implicitly acknowledged, Twenty20 is the flavour of the month, possibly the age; yes, it probably will transform the game’s finances for evermore; yes, it may well reverse more than a century’s worth of custom by making clubs more profitable to play for than countries. Nevertheless, it explicitly insisted, Test cricket, for which the Championship provides the training and manpower, remains the game’s highest and most important means of expression. Which will come as a relief to traditionalists and purists alike, contemptuous as so many are of the shorter format, not to say fearful that it might swallow all other variations whole.

That the decision to divide the Championship into two tiers from 2000 has heightened competitiveness is beyond argument, as the likes of Justin Langer will attest, and this year’s race has been the most riveting yet. Nothing underlines this more indelibly than that Hampshire, in shedding their relegation fears with last Friday’s victory over Surrey, soared to the top of the table. Indeed, when the penultimate round begins on Wednesday, a mere 25 points will cover the top eight sides. Only Surrey, whose relegation Hampshire all but confirmed, do not cling on to a mathematical chance of emerging triumphant. The majority, by the same token, could still go down. Purr-fect.

For once, we have the weather to thank. Of the 64 First Division fixtures to date, 27 have had a victor. Up to now, the lowest number of decisive results in a top flight campaign has been 34, the average 40; only once, in 2004, have draws outnumbered wins. Even in the similarly sodden summer of 1967, with its diet, exclusively, three-day games, there were more wins than draws. Indeed, this year’s champions may even fall short of Warwickshire’s paltry five wins in 2004, at 31.25% the lowest such proportion since the competition was formally constituted in 1890.

There is, though, another factor. With no dominant side on view – Durham, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Yorkshire and Hampshire have all topped the table this term - the differential between the number of points for a win (14 points) and a draw (four) is such that avoiding defeat is all too often the priority. Throw in batting (five) and bowling (three) bonus points and a draw can net 12 points. Ed Smith, the Middlesex captain, is far from alone in advocating that victories be worth at least four times as much as a stalemate and that bonus points be scrapped. Many believe, with similarly good cause, that 12 matches per team would be more conducive to fitter minds and bodies, though that would rob followers of both the symmetry of a home-and-away programme and four precious weeks of those numerical soap operas we call scoreboards. Still, a County Championship without tinkering would be like a dog deprived of the ability to moult.

For some, history beckons, at however long a shot. For Sussex, the first hat-trick of titles since Yorkshire in 1968; for Kent, a first Championship since 1978. Neutrals, though, will be torn between the likelier lads of Durham and Somerset, neither of whom have ever worn this particular crown. That the latter have been trying since 1891, whereas the former only entered the lists in 1992, swings the sentimental vote their way. And while Durham’s final assignment is a trek to Canterbury, Somerset will host Lancashire, who have gone two months without a win, and have not won the pennant outright since 1934.

Not since 1974 has its destination been decided by the elements. On that occasion Hampshire watched the rain fall for three days while Worcestershire took two bonus points during the only day’s play possible at Chelmsford, and ultimately took the title by that very margin. If it means breaking their duck, neither Durham nor Somerset would have the slightest objection to a nationwide monsoon.

But no matter who wins, the unedifying fact, for apostles of an exclusively Twenty20 world, is that cricket’s most venerable competition is still alive and kicking what one hesitates, in polite company, to call “ass”. Long may it reign.