One-day win highlight of Essex's season

Philip Oliver reviews Essex’s 2008 season in the blog Third Umpire. He lauds them for their one-day performances, and is optimistic about the county’s chances of promotion to Division One in the Championship next season. The blog also has season reviews for Worcestershire and Hampshire.

Essex enjoyed a successful 2008 season, confirming themselves as one of the premier limited overs teams in the country. Unfortunately a similar winning formula continues to evade them in the championship, where they will start 2009 in division two for the eighth time in 10 years of the two division structure.

On the Sky Sports website, Ian Ward, the former England batsman, provides a comprehensive review of the 2008 county season.

When I was at Surrey you'd see Alec Stewart, Mark Butcher, Graham Thorpe and the rest going off and playing for England and that made you realise you had to improve if you wanted to stay in the side. You start thinking like an international cricketer and trying to emulate what they were achieving. Durham have had Harmison, Collingwood and Plunkett going into international cricket and that will have motivated the other players. They've been the stars for the last few seasons and it's all culminated this year.