u/Favanu

Champo Specco six-oh, the one with the results except for Surrey. Some of the results were predictable, like Durham having too much for Worcs, Sussex steadily rolling over Leicestershire, and Essex having too much for a limited Hants to handle. Some were surprising, like Glamorgan chasing 285 to beat Somerset. Kent somehow overcame Glos in the battle of stoppable force vs movable object, while Warks and Middlesex took excellent advantage of collapses from Yorks and Lancs respectively. Derbyshire, fresh from the humiliation of losing to literally Kent, roared into a huge lead against Northants and managed to get the last wickets in the dying light with everyone looking half dead. A lovely time was had by all except Surrey, who once again got a bore drawn and also had to watch Ben Duckett get 203*. And lost Gus Atkinson.

Player wise, pretty much all the big dogs have now shown up at least once, at least the ones in the country. Harry Brook got a bit of a run out but couldn’t arrest his side’s slide, while Stokes took the new cherry for Durham. Duckett got a daddy, Josh Tongue manged to concuss one of his erstwhile test mates, and Jamie Smith now has the gloves for Surrey, which will be good practice even if it comes at the expense of our wonderful boy Foakes. Bethell is over in the IPL and looking pretty short of form, as is Jofra Archer. Whether either make it back for the first test against New Zealand remains to be seen.

What we do now know is the identity of England’s chief selector, the Pole himself Marcus North. Presumably that means all the Durham players will get picked and he’s going to try his best to sabotage us come Ashes time, which will be easy as we’ll just do it to ourselves like usual. There have been some grumbles about making an Aussie chief selector for England, especially with English candidates available, but it’s hard to argue that North doesn’t know the county setup and players very well. Everyone is still sure that we need a) an opening batter, b) a spinner, and c) pacers in general. I’ve tried to focus on those guys, but this was a fun round so excuse me if I go a little off piste.

 

On the radar

 

Durham’s top order: but not Alex Lees. It feels increasingly likely that the next England opener will ply their trade at the erstwhile home of our new chief selector, and the prospective pair batted beautifully together to ice a second innings chase and win the game for Durham. I’ve seen Emilio Gay described as ‘flavour of the day’ and ‘1 season wonder’ in this sub over the last few days, which feels extraordinary given that several are praising McKinney (20 county games, average 38) in the same post. For clarity, last year Gay was in the top ten in div 1 as a collapse prone Durham’s top scorer, and he broke 1000 runs at 53 as an opener for Northants the year before. McKinney may well be the better pure shot maker, demonstrated with his lovely 87*(71), and he might be the long term candidate if he can improve his footwork. Gay might not be the answer forever, but he’s worked harder than most in county cricket (coughHainescough) to earn a test cap. Incidentally Dom Sibley still persists down at Surrey, nearly making a double Dentury for his 77 and blunting an attack including Tongue, Olly Stone, and Fergus O’Neill. It’s hard to imagine him batting with Ben Duckett, but the Fridge still has utility.

 

Spinners: Jack Carson had another good week, snaffling 4 in the first innings and seemingly back to his tidy best. Liam Patterson-White has been a quiet driving force behind Notts’ rise for a while, and his 4 included finally breaking Sibley and taking out a set Jordan Clark. Shoaib Bashir is actually settling into his surroundings at Derbyshire, his 5 wickets across the match helping to break down a stubborn Northants. Mason Crane, who’d been outstanding thus far in the season, had a quieter round in Glammy’s win, but he’ still got something to offer so many years after his last test. And we also had allrounders Dan Lawrence and Matt Critchley doing well with the bat, and Calvin Harris’ son (the joke that keeps on giving) getting a ton in defeat for Northants . It’s not clear who will be England’s test spinner, especially with the incumbent Jacks and the potential understudy in Rehan both in India. Jacks was always an uneasy fit and should really be leaving his test spin days in the past, but Rehan’s batting and wicket taking potential might have to be weighed against the more effective but slightly less exciting gifts of a Carson or Crane.

Bens: Duckett opted to swerve the IPL and instead prioritise refinding his form after a poor winter. He’s been building in the Champo since he came back but his 203* against Surrey’s podcast-friendly attack sets a marker that we only need to find one new opener. Pretty much everyone recognised that the bucket hat salesman had more credit in the ECB bank than his partner, if not more actual money, and it’ll be interesting to see how he goes against New Zealand. Further down the order we’ve now seen Stokes, who took the new ball for Durham and did ok with it. Big Ben’s ongoing conversion from a batting allrounder to a swing merchant  who can hold a bat continues, and it seems to rather defeat the point of managing his workload if he’s opening the bowling every innings, but he is at least back and has an intact face. Harry Brook returned and got in a few hits before getting Bambered, Root was in decent nick last round too, and while Jamie Smith has lost his early season form since picking up the gloves, he is at least now his county side’s keeper, and can hope to rediscover his test exuberance. Question marks are still present around the identity of the opener and whether Bethell will be back from his Indian passage either in time or in form sufficient to play the first test. But most of the batting lineup is locked.

Nearly Men: I’ve mentioned Dan Lawrence, whose test ship seems to have sailed but is still a very fine batter, evidenced by his also very fine hundo. Sam Hain also gave a reminder of his class, the second innings 164 making up the majority of the difference between the sides as Warks ground down Yorks. Joe Clark is more a Lucky Near Miss, but he did get another ton. Tawanda Muyeye, Nearly Qualified, hit a ton and a 90 as the driving force behind Kent winning two on the bounce, a stunning vindication of doing a social media blackout and unleashing the vibes police.

 

Subject to a strongly worded ECB review

 

Test pacers: Coming into the round there were only two very high likelihood test seam picks, and one of them pretty quickly managed to concuss the other. Josh Tongue is the most certain to start, the clear standout from the season so far, but Gus Atkinson was anonymous before being Tongued hard on the helmet, and is now likely to be out for a while. The most notable bowling contributions from an English standpoint were Ethan ‘Bam Bam’ Bamber, who blew Yorkshire’s top order to smithereens, and 18 year old Tom Norton taking a hattrick on debut. Ollie Robinson and Sam Cook took six each across their matches, and neither will have hurt their recall prospects, while Olly Stone played again and showed he’s at least fit enough to bowl quick-ish for quite a few overs. It’s also notable that Ben Stokes took the new ball for Durham, somewhat suggesting that all this talk of getting in line leaders and traditional seamers wasn’t actually real. How any of this shakes out into a test attack is hard to fathom, especially with the pod squad and the BBC throwing names like Mitch Stanley out there too.

 

The management of James Rew: Rew’s early season cemented what we already knew, that he was an exceptional talent and amongst the very best bats in the country. Unfortunately the positions he plays are currently occupied in the test team by the other best bats in the country, and in at least two cases the world. So suddenly the smart people all decided that opening wasn’t a specialist position and therefore he could do it, no trouble. Somerset, who know very well how to develop excellent players, resisted this as much as they could, but eventually they caved to pressure and threw him in as an opener. The result was watching a hyper-talented 22 year old dumped in a completely unfamiliar position and not being able to immediately thrive, scoring a total of 4. This doesn’t mean that he can’t ever be an opener, nor is it any indicator that the young man isn’t ready for tests. It does mean he might have to wait for a while though. One hopes that he’ll at least be allowed to leave squads and continue his excellent red ball experience rather than having to carry water for the next six months.

 

Surrey drawing: I know most would prefer this to them winning everything, but the bore draws really have to stop. It can’t just be the Oval cos they weren’t there for this, it can’t just be their attack cos some of them are really good. They have loads of fast scoring batters. What’s going on?

 

Will definitely play for England one day: Tawanda Muyeye, Ethan Bamber, Tom Norton but only if we start calling it ‘England and Wales’ again, Jack Carson, Naavya Sharma, some of the many unrelated Thomas’.

 

Nice to see them having fun: Sir James Anderson, Matt Critchley, Rishi Patel, Callum Parkinson, Martin Andersson, Dan Worrall, Jack White, James Fuller, Brooke Guest, Sam Hain, Ryan Higgins, John Simpson, Calvin Harrison, Adam Hose.

I spent two full days without any sort of signal in the Scottish highlands this weekend so missed a lot. Tell me what that was.

​

Champo Specco 5: The one with the results. It was as if the spirit of the Champo hates April but is broadly positive towards May, because not only did we get all but one game ending in a positive result, there was also a whole bunch of other fun stuff. What was your favourite? Was it Robbo hitting a defiant century to cement his test opener place? Was it Olly Stone being miraculously uninjured enough to splatter some stumps? Was it world class spin bowling all rounder Joe Root? Was it literally Kent winning a game of cricket? Was it Ben Sanderson’s 7fer or Kiran Carlson’s 209? Or was it when Will Smeed said ‘Smeed it’ and just Smeeded all over everybody’s Smeeds?

Some of the results were predictable from early on, like Sussex battling after having their top order skittled twice but still eventually succumbing to Surrey, or Hampshire’s limited batting failing to chase down a monumental Glos total. Some were surprising, like Kent’s recovery from 93/4 to an eventual rout of Derbyshire, and Somerset finally  being jinxed by u/LordDusty losing despite having had a first innings lead against Yorkshire. What matters is that there was genuinely great cricket all round, and some daft stuff obvs, and the concern around pitches and injury subs gave way to a celebration of genuinely gripping sport.

Notable by his absence however was Big Bad Baz McCullum, who presumably was too busy frolicking in bluebell-carpeted woodland with Harry Brook. The IPL kru are still in their pyjamas in India, with an increasing likelihood that at least a couple of them will still be there a few days before the first NZ test starts. Almost every other test regular has now had at least a couple of games to get back in rhythm, and things are shaping up. Incidentally, I’m not mentioning Zak Crawley any more even though he wasn’t great because a) he actually got a stinker of an LBW decision which was clearly going down leg, b) I’ve said all I realistically can about him, and c) I can’t find anyone who thinks he’s keeping his test place anyway. As usual though, this is just my speculation, I’m usually wrong, and county performances don’t really seem to matter that much for selection anyway, so this is all largely a waste of time. Enjoy!

On the radar:

Dom Sibley/Emilio Gay: I considered just cutting and pasting the bit about them from last week. Again both made centuries, although at least this time one was pivotal in an actual win for his team. This was classic Fridge stuff, grinding down Sussex’s bowlers, putting a high value on his wicket, and not taking the bait, at least until he uncharacteristically skipped down the track and got stumped on 187 having started to accelerate. Gay was more fluent, his 129 coming largely in the presence of the equally impressive but significantly more South African David Bedingham. The combination of runs scored and hype articles about him mean that Gay is probably the man in pole position for a test opener’s slot, but one assumes the NZ attack will be pretty happy to not see the Sibley’s name on the teamsheet after he dead batted them for 200+ balls back in 2021. There were also excellent hundred-odds from Ben Slater to establish Notts’ win over Leics; Ricardo Vasconcelos to hammer home Northants’ advantage over Worcs; and the Zain-Ul-Hassan surprisingly tonning up against a decent-on-paper Hants attack.

 

Joseph Edward Root: The spin-bowling allrounder might have an England future after a lovely second innings four-fer against spin specialists Somerset. Ok, I suppose Dom Bess helped, and Mason Crane also looked excellent again for Glamorgan. The problem with the latter two is that a) neither of them is also England’s greatest batsman of modern times and b) both have already been tried and failed, whereas the test team have long demonstrated that they’re fine with chucking Root the ball and asking for a miracle rather than actually nurturing spin stocks in the champo. Alongside those mentioned Jack Carson got a ton and 9 wickets to push himself back into possible contention, Liam Patterson-White was reliable as ever in getting a fifer for Notts, and both Josh De Caires and Archie Vaughan continued their weird openers-who-bowl-spin-and-also-have-famous-dads thing to decent effect. With the exception of Root It’s hard to pick which of them will be present in the test side, or indeed what any long term spin plans are.

Ollie Robinson: The round ended with Sussex’s captain on the losing end of the result but also trumpeting some ‘encouragement’ he’s received from Big Bad Baz and Bigger Badder Blob. The mind boggles about exactly what Key and McCullum’s message said (speculation in the comments please) but while Robbo might have had a tough time with the ball at the Oval he had a lovely knock with the bat, his even hundred stabilising his side from 92/7. Supposedly he’s in competition to be an attack line leader against Sam Cook, who had a bye week this round but has been as reliable as ever with the ball. It’s hard not to think that going back to Robbo would be a significant climbdown for the test setup, but there is some evidence that the man himself has matured emotionally, and he at least looks fitter than he has for a couple years. Incidentally veteran pacers Ben Sanderson and Lewis Gregory were possibly the biggest standouts of this round and Olly Stone also produced some absolute seeds to remind us of his excellence in the rare situation that he’s fit. Matt Fisher might also throw himself into the line leader ring after taking 3 in each innings as team ‘Posh And A Bit Evil’ beat team ‘Posh But Quite Nice, Actually’ at the Oval.

 

Pitches: I went hard on the April crapness last round, so it’s only fair to note that pretty much everywhere seemed much better balanced this week. The Oval was still flat but definitely had more in it, and even the Lord’s draw pitch had enough interest for bowlers. Special mention should go to Taunton, which gets a lot of grumbles about being too spin heavy but was pretty much perfectly balanced for an exceptional game of cricket.

 

Subject to a strongly worded ECB review:

 

Missing test players: In Specco circles we’ve largely been proceeding on the wisdom that the test places of Duckett, Bethell, Root and Brook were pretty much locked in, as was Cap’n Stokes. Duckett and Root have both had a good run out now and both look in acceptable nick, while Stokes has been recovering from a facial injury and will play the next two. It’s less clear why Cherrington has waited so much longer than the other multiformat guys. It may be that he’s so confident of his place and so happy with his own training that he doesn’t think he needs it, and that may be true. He’s also seen his stellar average drop a bit, *only* managing 45 last year, and had a few incidences of struggling to read the game situation and not really impacting as much as he could. I’d naively expect a run of proper FC cricket could help with some of that, as it seems to be doing for Jamie Smith, and maybe he thinks two champo games plus the possibility of the Lions will be enough. Either way, there’s now another prodigy in JRew who’s out there gunning for a place in the order, and Harry should be feeling at least a modicum of pressure.

Bethell is a different story, as are Archer, Jacks and now Rehan, all with varying stages of match experience but none of it lasting very long. None of them seems to be in any sort of form either. I fully understand why the IPL is so important to both the players and the ECB, but I also can’t really see how any of those players can expect to pole up on the first morning at Lords without having seen a red ball bowled in anger. Maybe they’re all just so good that it doesn’t matter, but Bethell doesn’t look to be in form for RCB, Archer is moving further away from test lines and lengths with every match he plays, Jacks’ only bowling experience was awful, and Rehan isn’t even making the bench. Nobody could begrudge any of them a bit of a break post IPL since they’ve been mostly away from home since the start of November, but It’s not clear how that resolves for the NZ tests.

 

Sonny Baker: He’s had some great games up until now and I’ll put on record that I think he’ll play a test for England within the next 2 years, but this round maybe showed why he might not be ready yet. This should have been a great setup for him to prove his worth, on a good batting pitch and with top class line leaders ahead of him to show him the way and allow him to bowl for short bursts to break partnerships. He didn’t really manage it, producing some decent balls but flagging as Glamorgan’s innings extended and not really threatening to impact. He’s still young and learning fast, so hopefully the skills to beat batters on these pitches and the consistency to limit scoring until that happens will both come in time. Incidentally Rory Haydon, whose background is in minor counties, took twin fifers as a small bright light amid the gloom in Derbyshire.

Asa Tribe: Coming off a stellar last season and an excellent time on a tough lions tour it was at least possible that Tribe could have strolled directly into a test opening spot if he’d kept his form going. The young man hasn’t quite managed it, while still showing enough to suggest that he has both the skills and the temperament to make it there in time. He’s still averaging 42, which is a good return for his first time in Div 1, and has had a few times when he’s been set and not managed to cash in which is typical of a youngster. Hopefully a little more seasoning will get him there. Another young talented bat, Joshua Thomas, showed some great potential with his first properly big scores, 136 to set up Somerset’s first innings lead and then 57 to top score in their failed chase. Coincidentally his namesake Adam Thomas also got an excellent ton on FC debut for Surrey.

Will definitely play for England one day: All the good young Thomases, Ben Mayes, Rory Haydon, James Sales, Jack Carson

Nice to see them having fun: Ben Sanderson, Daniel Bell-Drummond, Lewis Gregory, Ben Slater, Gareth Roderick, Kiran Carlson, Joe Root, Ryan Higgins, Ben Raine, Jordan Clark, Ben Green.

 

With it being a bank holiday I was at a caravan in the Dales with 0 internet for a chunk of the time, so what did I miss?

Champo Specco 4, the one with the terrible pitches. At least in Div 1, where it was possible to tell that almost every game was headed for stalemate before the end of day 2, almost unheard of without rain delays. As a result there was a lot of batting done this round. A lot . Notts were essentially defensively batting for about 3 full days and pulled it off pretty easily to draw with Warks, the oval pitch looked rubbish again as Essex and Surrey each failed to land blows, and even Sir Jimmy struggled to get wickets as the game wore on.

 

Luckily we’ll always have Kent, whose batting I was going to describe as ‘paper thin’ until I remembered that paper actually has some pretty decent resistance properties if it’s folded correctly. Kent certainly folded, but not correctly. I’m sure there’s a better way of organising that joke but I can’t really work it out, sufficed to say Kent are bad at batting. Derbyshire also had a bit of a mare against a Glos attack which could be described as ‘piecemeal’ but still managed to skittle them, the Bristolians smashing Shoaib Bashir about in a fun 36-run romp to seal the win. And Durham easily chased a big final day target at home against leaders Lancs to jump up to second spot in Div 2.

 

In Test terms, we still have a lot of established players benchwarming in India, the captain looking terrifyingly emaciated and not playing, and a few others presumably too busy catching the last of the blossom tree blooms and helping out with lambing season to turn up and play. The same spots seem available: opener, possibly keeper, and bowling (general). I’ve tried to focus on those areas, especially as we have yet to select a selector who can make these decisions. I assume there’s a selector selector somewhere, but maybe that person resigned too and we now need a selector selector selector. Or Skeletor. Anyway, Baz, Key and Stokes don’t seem to have drawn much on the expertise of the last selector and have probably already decided who’ll be lining up against New Zealand at Lords. And it’s probably not any of the dudes I’m mentioning.

 

On the radar

 

Emilio Gay/Dom Sibley: There were a whole lotta runs this week, primarily because there were also a whole lotta flat pitches, so the scores probably should come with a small asterisk. Still, what undoubtedly happened was that the Slimline Fridge did classic Fridge stuff, grinding out 101 in 283 balls. Gay was far more fluid, his second innings ton coming against the likes of Sir Jimmy and batting his side serenely into safety. Both should be at least in consideration for test looks, at least if the as yet unselected selector decides to go for someone with actual opening experience up top. The debate seems to be whether the top order nous and experience of the likes of Sibley and Gay is more important than just picking the best batters, which would almost certainly mean one of Bethell, Rew and Smith opening.

The openers had a busy round. Tall Paul Walter tonned up prior to Sibley at the Oval, Haseeb Hameed also scored an excellent steadying second innings ton after following on, which was good to see, and Finlay Bean took advantage of the dead pitch at Headingley. The young pretender Ben McKinney continued the ‘famine’ part of his feast or famine, but Asa Tribe showed signs of settling into div 1 with a sensible knock to get his side a draw on the last day. Ben Duckett, the opener who’s likely to keep his place, got an unusually circumspect 155 across Notts’ draw with Warks and is hopefully back in ok nick after a very poor winter on and off the pitch.

 

Josh Tongue: The pick of the current test bowlers, at least in the CC thus far. Tongue’s fifer had many of the hallmarks of his test work; wildness, threat, and misfires, but whilst he’s never likely to be economical he is able to consistently threaten most batters. And he’s also played his second game on the bounce with a decent bowling workload, a positive sign for a man with such parlous fitness. Tongue still feels concerningly erratic and delicate, and he’s a short-burst change bowler not a line leader, a role which is still missing. Matt Potts was once the man who might take that role, and he showed why, steaming in to take 6 important wickets and make it possible for his batting colleagues to take the victory in the Div 2 heavyweight clash against Lancs. He’ll unfortunately need to keep the wickets coming thick and fast if he’s going to make any selectors abandon memories of Sydney. Amongst other notables Tom Taylor is still propping Worcs up as they demolished a feeble Kent lineup; Michael Booth showed some allround potential for Warks against Notts, and both Henry Crocombe and George Hill showed their differing utility at Headingley.

 

Dan Lawrence: It’s unlikely that he’ll be in the hunt for any more England caps, but his combination of steadying runs at 5 and blended frog offies did a lot of sterling work for the Surrey draw machine. That will be especially important for them with the news of Cam Steel’s enforced retirement, sad news about a fine cricketer. DLaw has taken his spin role very seriously since moving to Surrey and is still one of the best bats in the country, so it’s sad that the ill-fated opening experiment might be the last sight of him in an England shirt. It seems pretty clear that some sort of spinning allrounder will be involved in tests this summer though, and that might be James Coles, who  pushed his credentials by collecting 3 wickets including YJB’s middle stump through the gate, and he also got 100 runs across the match. And then the OG spin allrounder Joseph Edward Root stormed back with 96 and 4 wickets. Few other options were on show after Rehan Ahmed jetted to India to join Will Jacks and Jacob Bethell on a bench and Ben Kellaway remained injured. Mason Crane again did ok, as did Dom Bess, but it’s hard to see this England side looking to the past. Incidentally the other current spin incumbent, Shoaib Bashir, got 3 wickets but was also tonked about in Derbyshire’s loss to Glos.

 

Subject to a strongly worded ECB review

Test capped pacers: I’ve mentioned Tongue and Potts, but they certainly can’t do it alone. Jofra is at least enjoying himself in India, but likely won’t be back in time for the first test, and neither will Carse after another injury. Gus Atkinson was removed from the small padded box under the stairs he’s been hibernating in and got plenty of overs under his belt but had very little apparent threat on a dead Oval pitch. Sam Cook bowled dry but also toiled, as did Matt Fisher, and Ollie Robinson went wicketless and largely nondescript. None will have allayed any concerns about their test readiness, even if the insipid pitches were a large factor. Dillon Pennington also struggled, another going wicketless, a fate which also befell Sir James Anderson in Durham’s second innings.  All of these should come with a big caveat in terms of just how little they were getting from the pitches, even though those pitches included several test grounds for the summer. The main beneficiaries were likely the seamers who missed the round.

 

Zak Crawley: Every article, every podcast, every stats piece has been talking about who would be best to replace Creepy as opener against New Zealand. Usually that’s the time when the man himself gets one massive score which apparently justifies him continuing to be selected for another few years. But that just isn’t happening; Zak instead reverting to type by getting set then getting out against not particularly special bowling. It’s hard to imagine the Canterbury dressing room is much fun to be in right now, faith healer notwithstanding, but Creepy is going to have to get used to it.

 

April pitches: The last few rounds have been a reminder that we have some high class cricketers and some high quality cricket on the county circuit, and some proper nailbiters such as the Hants/Somerset game last round. It’s a shame then that this round descended into a feast of dry batting and increasingly part-time bowling. And ok, it was funny seeing first Dom Sibley and then Ben Foakes bowling into the Oval graveyard, but the endless Root/Bess plugging at Headingley held little joy, and Leics giving Rishi Patel the most overs in the final innings wasn’t a good sign either. Add in some more injury sub nonsense happening to Lancs and it became a dull experience. Some turned it to their advantage, like in Durham’s serene chase, but as most games wore on it felt like only major batting errors would make any difference.

 

Will definitely play for England one day: All the bright young pacers who missed this round, James Coles,  Michael Booth if he’s qualified

 

Nice to see them having fun: Tom Westley, Tom Taylor, Miles Hammond, John Simpson, Dan Lawrence, Ed Barnard, Haseeb Hameed, Kiran Carlson, Matt Milnes, Jonny Tattersall, Joseph Edward Root.

 

A bit annoying to see them having fun: Jake Weatherald

 

My inexorable drift back to hate-watching Yorkshire means that I probably missed a lot of other stuff, so what did I miss.