County
There have been worse seasons
Glamorgan's chief executive Hugh Morris has spent too long staring mournfully at squares in 2015, but there have been worse seasons
Peter Miller
17-Sep-2015
Glamorgan's season is still two matches from being over but there is nothing left in it for them. It has been this way more often than not over the last decade but 2015 actually has a few more positives than in previous years. Even after the defeat to Kent in their last home game of the season, their worst in terms of runs since the Second World War, Glamorgan are fourth in the championship table. If they remain there until the end of the competition that will represent their best finish since 2010.
There have been worse seasons. While never competing for a promotion spot they were undefeated in the Championship for the first half of the season. A win in a five over slog against Gloucestershire in the last T20 Blast group game would have seen them make the quarter finals but the decision to promote Graham Wagg to open didn't work out.
It was in the Royal London One Day Cup that things have been really ugly, but it hasn't been the players' fault. Glamorgan were already hamstrung before it got underway thanks to a two point deduction as a result of a sub-standard pitch for a match against Durham last season. Even before the first match was under way captain Jacques Rudolph was talking about giving the youngsters a go if they didn't have a great start.
Full postBopara deserves a chance to revive Essex
Ravi Bopara deserves a chance to reshape an Essex side reeling from the departure of coach Paul Grayson and with senior players increasingly failing to deliver
Rob Johnston
11-Sep-2015
'It's not the despair… I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.' John Cleese's character in the film Clockwise wasn't talking about the lot of an Essex supporter but he might as well have been.
What started off as a season full of promise has in the last few weeks unravelled in to a fine mess. With chances of silverware gone, head coach Paul Grayson jumping before he was pushed and Reece Topley moving to Hampshire, it is difficult to think how it could have gone worse.
It was obvious that Ronnie Irani, the new chairman of the cricket committee at Essex, wanted his former team-mate Grayson out. Things came to a head after two quarter final defeats: outplayed by Birmingham Bears in the Natwest T20 Blast and defeated by Yorkshire in the Royal London One Day Cup. Grayson leaves after eight years in charge.
Full postMiddlesex's championship form world apart from one-day struggles
Middlesex's one-day form remains wretched but few supporters anticipated that they would marshall a Championship challenge so impressive that they lie second only to Yorkshire
Dan Whiting
15-Aug-2015
Middlesex this year were tipped for relegation by many aficionados. Shorn of the mainstay of their batting in Chris Rogers this year and having grimly preserved their Division One status in 2014 with a nail biting draw which sent Lancashire to the depths of Division Two instead, grey skies were looming over those whose daily grind is played out at Headquarters in 2015.
However, Middlesex sit proudly second in Division One, with only the might of Yorkshire above them in the table. Yet the natives of Lord's are restless and this is due to the North London side's form in one day cricket. How can a team who have performed with such distinction in the four day game struggle so much in the shorter format?
The nadir of the Middlesex season was a crushing ten-wicket loss a couple of weeks ago at the Rose Bowl to Hampshire in the Royal London Cup. In a game that meant that the après match show from Irish boy band Boyzone had to be moved forward to accommodate the waiting masses on the South Coast, those who had travelled to Southampton were fuming.
Full postDerbyshire go 'Pop' but promise remains
The season hasn't gone quite the way that Derbyshire fans might have hoped, but recent weeks have suggested that the coaching of Graeme 'Pop' Welch and his team is at last bearing fruit.
Steve Dolman
10-Aug-2015
The season hasn't gone quite the way that Derbyshire fans might have hoped, but recent weeks have suggested that the coaching of Graeme 'Pop' Welch and his team is at last bearing fruit.
The club's Academy has been going on for some years, with Karl Krikken and Howard Dytham in turn doing sterling work in identifying and nurturing players of potential. The argument was that none of the earlier ones established themselves in the county game. Atif Sheikh, Dan Redfern, Ross Whiteley and Paul Borrington were the best known, but the first three moved elsewhere for still limited success, while the latter suffered from premature promotion to a struggling side and was released at the end of last season.
Yet the signs are that the current crop could be the real deal. Welch is known as an outstanding coach of seam bowlers and proved that first at Essex and then at Warwickshire, where his coaching of Chris Wright, Keith Barker and Boyd Rankin made them into a championship-winning seam attack.
Full postEssex show dramatic turnaround
Paul Grayson said before the season that he thought Essex could gain promotion from Division Two of the County Championship and win a one-day trophy, but only now are the county finding form
Rob Johnston
04-Jul-2015
When Essex's coach Paul Grayson said before the season that he thought his side could gain promotion from Division Two of the County Championship and win a one-day trophy, he wasn't being disingenuous.
Essex have seven international players in their squad, plus experienced first-class cricketers. Hopes were rightly high that they could do better than last season in the first class competition, where they finished only eight points short of promotion to Division One and in one-day cricket, where they fell at the quarter final stage in both competitions.
By the end of May, however, they were languishing at the bottom of the Championship, the first team in over two years of first-class cricket to be beaten by Leicestershire, and had won only one of their first five games in the NatWest T20 Blast.
Full postGlamorgan feast on South African flavours
The influx of South Africans since Jacques Rudolph became Glamorgan captain has been dramatic and has been a successful short-term fix at a time of difficulty
Peter Miller
19-Jun-2015
There have been times this season where the top five in Glamorgan's batting order have been South African born.
The influx of South Africans began with the signing of Jacques Rudolph for the beginning of the 2014 season on a two year deal.
While there was a disappointing spell with Surrey in 2012 his record of over 5000 first class runs with Yorkshire at an average of 52 led you to believe that success in county cricket was well within him.
It was when the 2014 Royal London One Day Cup got underway that Rudolph came into his own. He finished as the tournament's leading run scorer, making three hundreds and three fifties in eight innings. Combined with a much better second half of the Championship and decent T20 returns that guided Glamorgan to a quarter final spot, it was a decent first year for Glamorgan's new overseas player.
Full postStop Graves and the ECB destroying summer's crown
How lovely that something so illogically crazy as the County Championship ever started, evolved, survived, and for many of us became the centrepiece of every summer. It must be proudly preserved
Dave Morton
15-Jun-2015
Rarely does a Yorkshireman feel he has had value for money. Parking the car at Canterbury, a glass of beer at Lord's, a cup-cake at the Ageas Bowl - these will all bring forth the plaintiff cry: "How much," you'll hear us say, "it's HOW much?"
By contrast, Stephen Chalke's book Summer's Crown is more than good value at a modest £20.
It is the story of cricket's County Championship (which is indeed its subtitle) and what a wonderfully quirky, mad, English story! How lovely that something so illogically crazy ever started, evolved, survived, and for many of us became the centrepiece of every summer.
Full postThe difficult journey of Adil Rashid
Adil Rashid's eye-catching performance with bat and ball on his return to England's ODI side was light years away from the troubled figure dropped by Yorkshire three years ago
Matt Roller
10-Jun-2015
May 2012
Adil Rashid, the 24-year-old leg-spinner, is dropped by Yorkshire for a County Championship Division Two match against Northamptonshire. After a meagre return of nine wickets in six matches, at an average of 49.0, and just 92 runs, including a fifty, the decision is not a difficult one.
His replacement in the side, former England U19 captain Azeem Rafiq, only manages to take two wickets in the match, although helps his cause for future selection with a quickfire 37.
Full postOverton's sibling rivalry brings joy to Somerset
The Overton twins are making an impression again down in Somerset. Jeremy Blackmore takes a look back over the brothers' careers to date and finds two cricketers who have really started to come of age
Jeremy Blackmore
04-Jun-2015
Neither Craig nor Jamie Overton have been short of admirers since they first entered the consciousness of the cricket-watching public in their teens.
Both twins are special talents and both have made crucial contributions for Somerset, earning call-ups to various England development programmes. But injuries have restricted the occasions they have appeared in the same side, leaving fans to only imagine what a team containing a pair of fit and in-form brothers could do for Somerset's fortunes.
Last week a half-term holiday crowd at Taunton got a mouthwatering glimpse of that future as they watched the 21-year-olds dominate the third day of the LV= Championship match against reigning county champions Yorkshire.
Full postFootitt's progress from wild youngster to class act
Mark Footitt has gone from wild tyro to a class act who deserves England scrutiny
Steve Dolman
01-May-2015
There was a time, back in the early days of this blog, when the mention of Mark Footitt's name brought forth a veritable postbag of responses.
He wasn't that fast, said people who hadn't faced him at 22 yards. He was unfit. He was erratic. He was a liability. He was a Nottinghamshire reject. As is the way with life, people - supporters, mind - were quick to focus on what he couldn't do, rather than look at, and be grateful for what he could do.
That, in Mark's case, has always been to propel a cricket ball down 22 yards as quickly as anyone in the country. No one ever doubted that, but this very rare talent was subsumed beneath plenty of counter arguments.
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