Neville Scott’s review of last year’s County Championship on pages 566 to 571 of this year’s Wisden is excellent, of course. However, his veiled attack on the competition’s two–division structure loses its authority somewhat in light of recent events.
According to Scott, ‘2009 brought the least compelling campaign in a decade of two-division play … only 44% of matches produced a winner, the lowest proportion in 17 years of purely four-day play.’ He calls two-division cricket a ‘ritual of mutual negation’.
Mutual negation? Really? A quick perusal of this year’s second division shows that in 22 matches there have only been TWO draws. Sussex, at the top, have won four out of five, and the bottom team, Surrey, have lost three out of four.
Most excitingly of all, Gloucestershire are riding high in third place, with three wins following two early losses. Today’s victory over Leicestershire was Gloucestershire's longest Championship game of the season, despite finishing only half an hour into the fourth day.
What all this tells us about the standard of cricket in the Championship’s second division, I’m not entirely sure, but I’m not complaining.
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