Three days to go

The climax to this year’s County Championship is so exciting that the BBC has live commentary all this week on 5 Live Sports Extra. Three teams, Nottinghamshire, Somerset and Yorkshire, are still in with a chance of securing top spot.

You could almost be fooled into thinking that the Championship is in rude health. In fact, tucked away out of view in April, May and now September, almost without exception played on weekdays, with few outings for centrally-contracted players, in reality the ECB has more or less given up on it. It’s there because it has to be there. Something to be endured, nothing more.

Last week, I went to the first day of the County Championship match between Surrey and Glamorgan at the Oval. There was great deal riding on the match – Glamorgan began the game second in Division 2 and needed points to guarantee promotion.

The cricket was of a high standard, and immensely enjoyable. Two young Surrey batsman, Jason Roy and Rory Hamilton-Brown, had fun smacking the ball all around the ground, and Kevin Pietersen was LBW second ball on his Surrey first-class debut, his first Championship match for over two years.

How many people were present? I’m guessing that less a hundred people, not including members in the pavilion, witnessed Hamilton-Brown’s display of power-hitting. It was a pitiful attendance by any standards. But with a few tweaks and modifications, I believe the situation could have been very different.

I was reminded of this when I glanced at the points tables this evening, one day into the last round of matches, with Nottinghamshire at the top of Division 1, two points ahead of Somerset and Yorkshire a further five points back. What did it all mean? Could all three teams still win the title, and if so, what did they (and their rivals) need to do?

The complicated system for scoring points in the Championship cannot be a good thing. Having to double-check in a book to see how Yorkshire could make up ground on the top two is ridiculous. And that was before I considered bonus points. The whole shebang needs simplifying, so both avid Championship-watchers and part-timers are clear who needs to do what to become champions.

Keeping a similar ratio of points (sixteen for a win, three for a draw), why not award five points for a win and one for a draw? And scrap bonus points – a confusing, meaningless system which only serves to muddy the waters further. Looking at the table under this revised system, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire would be tied at the top, with Somerset one point behind.

A win for Yorkshire or Nottinghamshire (and a loss for the other) would give that team the title. Somerset would have to win and hope the others didn’t. If both Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire won, then Nottinghamshire would be crowned champions by virtue of having won more games. Simple. Why make things more complicated than they need be? It’s a small change, but it would make the competition far more accessible to people with a passing interest in the game, the very people the competition needs to attract to survive.

The public are interested in the Championship, but, for whatever reason, they are hindered at every step of the way by the people who make the decisions.