Marcus Hook’s Surrey CCC column: T20 has been devalued by absence of leading exponents of white-ball game
Even if Surrey had got past Yorkshire and qualified for only their fifth T20 finals day in 16 seasons, there’s no getting away from the sense that the competition has been devalued by the absence of so many of England’s best white-ball cricketers
Surely, if you’ve finished in the top four of your group, you’ve earned the right to be at full strength for the business end, not significantly weakened.
The ECB’s decision to schedule the ODI and T20I series with India to coincide with not only the quarter-finals of the Vitality Blast, but also finals day, tells you everything you need to know in terms of August being focused entirely on The Hundred.
With England’s Test team continuing to prosper in the fast lane, maybe their new head coach, Brendon McCullum, will be instructed to impress on his players the need to pay more attention to the speed limit while The Hundred is on.
At the end of last week we heard that Dom Sibley will be returning to Surrey next year, following five seasons at Warwickshire.
Sibley became the youngest Englishman since W G Grace (in 1866) to hit a first-class double-century when, as an 18-year-old, he made 242 for Surrey against Yorkshire at the Oval in 2013.
It will be great to see Sibley back where it all started.
While he’s no doubt keen to break back into the Test team, his and Rory Burns’ penchant for patient accumulation at the top of the order would now appear to be at odds with the brand of cricket we’re seeing at international level.
All in all, it looks like a shrewd move on Surrey’s part to reunite the pair.
Talking of record breakers, the havoc being caused by England’s schedule could see Finlay Bean make his first-class debut against Surrey next week, fresh from having broken the 25-year-old second 11 Championship record held by Marcus Trescothick.
Bean hit an astonishing 441 in a second team game for Yorkshire against Notts last week, batting for 712 minutes.
Trescothick, who played 76 Tests and 123 ODIs and now works as England’s batting coach, previously held the record, set back in 1997, when he scored 322 for Somerset’s second 11 in a game against Warwickshire.
PICTURE: KEITH GILLARD
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