How to improve appeal of County Championship game ... with a magic wand Chris Waters

THERE was a moment during the final day of Yorkshire’s County Championship match against Warwickshire – a day on which no wickets fell and 195 runs were scored during 75.4 overs as the contest petered out into the dullest of draws – when two questions sprang to mind.
A dejected Yorkshire - including (l-r) Adam Lyth, Steve Patterson & Jordan Thompson - are unable to force victory over Warwickshire on the final day of their County Championship match. Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.comA dejected Yorkshire - including (l-r) Adam Lyth, Steve Patterson & Jordan Thompson - are unable to force victory over Warwickshire on the final day of their County Championship match. Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com
A dejected Yorkshire - including (l-r) Adam Lyth, Steve Patterson & Jordan Thompson - are unable to force victory over Warwickshire on the final day of their County Championship match. Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com

First, what am I doing here? And, second, what is everyone else doing here, i.e., the spectators?

Looking around as the final session started, I was astonished to see that there were perhaps a couple of hundred people still sitting in their seats.

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Were they asleep, perhaps, or had they in fact died, waiting to be discovered by the Headingley cleaners?

Yorkshire's Emerald Headingley ground. Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.comYorkshire's Emerald Headingley ground. Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com
Yorkshire's Emerald Headingley ground. Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com

I really couldn’t be certain as I gazed out from the press box in the Clean Slate pavilion, my eyelids propped open with toothpicks, but I was reminded of the old phrase “haven’t you got homes to go to?”

Obviously not.

I exaggerate, of course, and admire greatly the loyalty and dedication of everyone who stayed to the (very) bitter end, but this was grisly stuff indeed.

I love Championship cricket and the first-class game, but this had all the entertainment value of watching slates being cleaned for hours at a time.

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Many reasons have been advanced for the disappointing trend of dull games this year – by no means confined to Headingley.

Slow pitches, faulty balls, heavy rollers, good weather, less moisture content in the surfaces, less grass on the pitches, a points system that overly rewards draws, the fact that Pluto is currently in Capricorn and Jupiter in Aries, and so on.

Some of those are even true and there is no doubt that flatter pitches can potentially assist the England Test team, enabling batsmen to develop their concentration and bowlers new skills in an effort to get them out.

But cricket is an entertainment business (even Championship cricket, tha knows), and there is nothing worse, even to an ardent Championship lover, more futile, more pointless or soul-destroying than a first-class match going absolutely nowhere.

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Why, as Yorkshire versus Warwickshire reached its inevitable climax, the thought even occurred that I’d rather be watching the Northern Slatecleaners in The Yawndred, but luckily I snapped to my senses and realised that nothing could be quite as bad as that fate worse than death. So, what can be done?

As we await the latest so-called “high-performance” review into English cricket, and amid talk that some counties, such as lowly Leicestershire, should no longer be allowed to play Championship cricket, a ridiculous idea, is there any way to make it better/more interesting?

Everyone will have their views on how the Championship might best be structured and scheduled, but if I had a magic wand and in an absolutely ideal world that permitted such daydreams, I would like to see three-day cricket played on uncovered pitches, phased out in England in the 1960s.

One division, with the counties all playing each other home or away, would make for 17 games and a maximum of 51 days’ cricket for each side (at present, it is 14 games and a maximum of 56 days’ cricket) and also for a fully formed Championship again as opposed to a divisional or, as we have seen in recent times, conference system.

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More importantly, it would provide the potential for the sort of remarkable happenings that the game no longer serves up and which are cloaked in romance – a side suddenly getting bowled out for 15, say, or someone taking 10 for 10 a la Mr Verity, spinners thriving on ‘sticky dogs’ and batsmen having to hone their techniques accordingly to combat new challenges.

The possibility for many more variations within matches than we see at present would help to keep things fresh and exciting.

Granted, there would be downsides and no correlation with an international game played on well-prepared pitches in normalised batting conditions, but it sure could be fun.

Imagine if, at Clean Slate HQ last week, a heavy shower had spiced up the pitch on the last morning, making conditions perfect for Dom Bess, for example, to start turning the ball square to bring the encounter alive.

Instead, it was reaching for the toothpicks time and boredom in excelsis as the contest drifted into the annals of obscurity.

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