A Traditional British Summer Game

by user Alex Holowczak

Everyone in the USA is getting excited about the prospect of the new baseball season, so I thought I’d preview the new cricket season in England – our summer game.

Cricket works in a very different way to baseball. There are three forms of the game that are played over the course of the season, and four different competitions. I don’t like it, but it has to be lived with.

Firstly, you need to understand how it works. 18 counties are technically “major” counties, with another 18 or so Minor counties. That said, you never refer to the “major” counties as “major”, but they are the professional counties, whereas the Minor Counties (which are called as such) are amateur. Counties are the equivalent of states.

There are four competitions:

1. The County Championship – This dates back to before the USA gained its independence. The 18 counties are in a two-tier system with 9 teams in each. The top/bottom two swap divisions next season. Each team plays each other in the division home and away, i.e. twice. So 16 games. Each game lasts for four days and each team has two innings. There is a complicated points system, involving 14 points for a win, 7 for a tie (i.e. scores equal), 4 for a draw (i.e. the game doesn’t finish), and 0 for a loss. There are also bonus points – up to 3 for taking certain numbers of wickets, and up to 5 for scoring certain numbers of runs – but only in the first 130 overs (groups of 6 balls) in the first innings each of the match. That makes a total of 22 points per match available. This competitions heyday has long passed however, and its primary focus is to get players into the England team. With the introduction of more formats of the game, once the main focus of the English Summer is now a bit part. None of the old records are ever going to be beaten – there used to be twice as many games in a season until a few decades ago (the games only lasted three days too). Also, England players don’t get to play County Cricket, due to their national involvement. Mark Ramprakash was a star for Surrey in it last year, as he hit 8 centuries, a 300 not out, and scored an average with the bat of over 100, the fifth highest season average in the history of the competition. But it was a fluke. More annoyingly, nobody was there to see it, as crowds are sadly non-existent. The 10-20,000 seater stadiums are rarely filled with more than 50 to 100 people, most are of course at work, or more usually, only 50 year olds that probably own half of the county attend with a copy of The Times and a monocle. Or at least, that is the assumption. But still, the defending champions are Nottinghamshire.
2. Challenge Trophy – A 50 over One Day tournament. Played mainly on Sundays, there are two groups of 10, as teams from Scotland and Ireland (usually, but not always solely from those countries) join the counties. The two groups are North and South, and the winner of each goes through to the Final. Sussex beat Lancashire in that final last year.
3. Twenty20 Cup – Held in the middle of summer, this has been a welcome addition. Held after school, and after the summer exams for children, it’s the only time you’ll see the county grounds full all year apart from the Challenge Trophy Final. The 18 counties are split into 3 groups of 6, a North, Central and South division, and play 8 games, 4 at home, 4 away. The winners go through to the Quarter Finals, along with the best 5 runners up. After the Quarter Finals, the Semi Finals and Final are all held on the same Saturday a few weeks later. Leicestershire won last year.
4. Pro League – A 40 over One Day League. This now seems a bit unneeded, but a County Championship style competition in terms of relegation and promotion exists. It is held in the second half of the summer, on Sundays.

The main focus of the Summer will be how England gets on. You can guarantee crowds at the England matches, which involve Tests and One Day Internationals against India and the West Indies (once they get back from the World Cup in the Caribbean). England can feel confident of success against both, India flopped in the World Cup but are notoriously bad travellers, and the West Indies are in a period of regeneration.

It’s very hard to predict County cricket for many reasons. Firstly, the counties are all evenly matched (the divisions aren’t really that important). Also, the best players will go off to play for England, reducing their advantage. I support Warwickshire (it’s where I live!), and they should do well, as should Surrey, Sussex and Lancashire in the One Day competitions, but it’s still hard to tell.

Another thing you should know is that there is controversy in the game of cricket! Each county is allowed two overseas players (usually better than the English players) who aren’t in the touring sides to England (there’d be no point – they’d be playing for their country). However, lately, there have been a number of Kolpak signings. Under the ICC Laws, that means they can break this overseas law in England as long as they don’t play cricket for their country again. In that way, Stuart Law, a former Australian, has become one of English cricket’s best players for Lancashire. Having been snubbed in the World Cup, Jacques Rudolph signed for Yorkshire as a Kolpak, a move which annoyed the ECB, but is perfectly legal. There are lots of Kolpaks in the English game, and it is threatening to get rid of the traditional English professional cricketer, i.e. someone who doesn’t excel at the game, but is a good solid player to have in your team (I’m sure you can think of baseball equivalents). Some argue it helps them to firstly have competition, and secondly have better players to play with and against which helps them learn. Also, under EU law, any player in the EU is free from the overseas law, but since Europe is not exactly a cricketing heartland, only really Irish, Scottish and one Dutchman is currently good enough to take advantage of that law.

Yorkshire might therefore be good this year, especially with the return of their aging hero Darren Gough, a fast bowler that is loved by all Englishman. “Goughie” won Strictly Come Dancing over here too, interestingly, so did Mark Ramprakash, who I told you about earlier…

Other highlights of the English season include the Varsity match. It is our only equivalent to the US collegiate system, as Oxford and Cambridge, two of the top Universities in the world, have a cricket match, usually at either Fenner’s or Lord’s, as a three day match.

So there is the English cricket season! It should be an interesting thing to keep track of – I doubt anyone sits down to watch it ball by ball (they would have to do it in person, for a start), but it’s like the NHL – you want it to be there but wouldn’t go out of your way to support it.

Go Warwickshire!