Marcus Hook’s Surrey CCC column: County Championship still the competition the players – and most fans – want to see their side win

While the weather had the final say once again up and down the country, the second round of County Championship matches saw an uptick in spectator numbers. Combined with an equivalent increase in viewers online, it served as a reminder to those keen to slim down the domestic red-ball schedule even further, that they do so at the peril of killing off what remains – with the players, significantly – the competition most want to win.

It was disappointing to read Durham’s chief executive Tim Bostock labelling those warning of a further cut as ‘Luddites’.

Fifteen of the first-class counties are member-owned rather than privately-owned. The fact that Durham (along with Hampshire and Northants) are one of the other three lends Bostock’s stance a degree of context.

Surrey’s director of cricket Alec Stewart is an advocate of staying with 14 four-day fixtures a season.

“I don’t like the fact that you don’t play everyone twice in Division One,” said the former Surrey and England skipper. “I just don’t get that, but 14 games is a good number.

“Once you go less than 14 – I hear people say it should be 10 – you’re going to have two games that are rain-affected, so that leaves you eight games. Is that enough?

“Of those eight games the England boys might play two or three, therefore some players are only going to be playing five meaningful games a year.

“You’re not going to learn enough, in my opinion. You can net as much as you want, but it’s out in the middle where you gain all your knowledge and experience. I don’t think that’s enough, so I would want to stick as close to 14 championship games as possible.

“We know four domestic competitions is too many. If the Hundred is what’s going to bring all the money into the game, the T20 Blast might need to come down to 10 group games. But the big question remains – what do you play alongside The Hundred?”

Those new to the appeal of a day’s championship cricket last week could have been forgiven for assuming the game is in rude health, but the reality is some counties turned near £1million losses in 2023.

What separates the ‘haves’ from the ‘have nots’? It’s not the cricket, necessarily. For some, conferencing and events is proving to be a very lucrative sideline. Surrey made a pre-tax profit of £10m last year thanks to Oval Events, which contributed £13m. That’s right – without that additional revenue stream even Surrey would have made a loss.

The fact that 32 batters are averaging over 80 in the championship – half of those are averaging over 100 – after two rounds with the Kookaburra ball tells its own story.

For only the third time since 1989 (when the number of first-class counties increased from 17 to 18), there was not a single positive result across last week’s nine County Championship matches.

If the aim of the Kookaburra for certain rounds is to both encourage spin as well as give batters the chance to build an innings, the ECB’s ploy seems to be working.

This week teams will revert to using the Dukes ball, which favours seam. At least when Surrey travel to Canterbury a Dukes won’t be in the hands of Darren Stevens.

Stevens, who retired at the end of 2022, invariably had Surrey’s batters at sixes and sevens with his ‘dibbly-dobblers’ when they came up against him and Kent.

In his column for The Cricket Paper he wrote: “Talking to some of the players, they say the Kookaburra – famous for its understated seam – does a bit for about five overs and that’s it.”

Although deep fast-bowling strength has been Surrey’s winning formula in the last couple of seasons, Cameron Steel and Dan Lawrence’s spin have so far combined to take 21 County Championship wickets.

En route to winning the title last summer, the Oval outfit took only 17 wickets with spin, compared with 232 shared out between a seven-strong stable of frontline seamers – five of whom often appeared alongside each other.

PICTURES: KEITH GILLARD