I promise you right now that this will not be a regular feature of BtC. There is simply too much to keep track of in an already busy life to do a decent job of a county cricket diary. However, save for Gerard Houllier's dodgy heart and Andy Powell being hilarious (again!) in Walkabout (we've all got stupidly drunk in that particular establishment), nothing really has tickled my journalistic fancy of late. So I might as well go for what I know best!
County cricket is such a British tradition, akin with moaning about the weather and getting far too excited about royal weddings. And yet, just like the other examples, it is fundamentally flawed. As I managed to prove last season, there is simply too much cricket. Teams are travelling to different parts of the country, playing a four-day match, followed by a 40 over game on a Sunday in a different location, before travelling elsewhere and starting all over again. Yes we all know people who travel all over the country for their work, but these men in suits are not professional athletes. Fast bowlers in particular have a horrendous workload, getting through up to 20 overs in a day, with little time to rest and recuperate from the niggling injuries that you inevitably pick up. Believe me, I play far less cricket than these people but just enough to spend the entire summer in some degree of pain and doped up to my eyeballs on co-codamol.
The team that illustrates this fixture overcrowding the best are Durham. A side looking to bounce back after a poor 2010 which followed back-to-back championships, they are reckoned as having the best home-grown pace attacks in the country. And yet there resources are already stretched to their limit. Steve Harmison, in the autumn of his career, has been a great success in county cricket since his international exile. And yet he only managed 20 balls in the game against Hampshire (Chester-le-Street to Southampton illustrates the length of some journeys we're talking about on the circuit) before pulling up injured. Granted, it was a knock picked up whilst batting, but he is a big loss. Especially when you consider that Liam Plunkett has since broken down and Graham Onions is only just feeling his way back to fitness after an 18 month absence with stress fractures - another indication of a man just trying to do too much! Add in Mark Stoneman's broken wrist and skipper Phil Mustard's gout and you have a team pretty much on its' knees three weeks into the season.
Still I'd rather support a team with loads of injuries but playing good cricket. Instead I am lumbered with a fully fit Somerset side, tipped by many to be the team to beat in the Championship this year. They have indeed been the team to beat. The team to beat by an innings, not once, but twice. The Warwickshire game was a debacle. Despite inserting the visitors, Somerset still managed to concede over 600, as overseas player Ajantha Mendis proved a huge disappointment. It is not acceptable for a spin bowler to ball 15 front foot no balls in an innings, let alone go for 5 runs and over when you are supposedly an international class mystery spinner. He should be having no impact. However, he can have no real responsibility as a tail end batsman, when the team gets skittled for 50 following on. It wasn't like the Warwickshire bowling attack was that good, wickets were just chucked away. The distinct lack of confidence followed them to Liverpool, where Lancashire closed out another crushing defeat this afternoon. We lost our first two fixtures last season and still managed to finish 2nd, only missing out because Nottinghamshire won more games. But after this start, it will take a lot for Marcus Trescothick to rally the troops and come close again.
In terms of early outstanding performers, the man who has dominated in Division 1 has been Warwickshire's Varun Chopra. He hasn't scored a great deal of runs in the past, either for the Bears or former club Essex. However, he made hay down at Taunton last week with a maiden double century and has now followed that up with another (currently 223*) to almost save an ongoing game with Worcestershire. The man is in the form of his life. In Divison 2, I have been impressed with Essex's 17 year-old seam bowler Reece Topley. The lad bowls at a good clip already and can gain prodigious swing, albeit in helpful early season conditions. He picked up 5 wicket hauls in his first two matches, and has again made crucial strikes in the current game with Northants (my surprise pick to win promotion by the way. That's them fucked then!). It will be interesting to see how he goes as players get used to his significant height and sharp angle of delivery and when pitches flatten out through the year.
And, of course, if he can stay fit with the sheer volume of cricket!
RM
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