The men at the forefront of England’s red-ball revolution – Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key – have made it clear they would like to see their dynamic approach to the game replicated across the county network.
Players from within the England dressing room have been invited to spread the word while back with their clubs and a get-together of first-class coaches and directors of cricket earlier this year saw Zoom presentations from Stokes and McCullum advocating their new methods.
‘Bazball’ was the talk of the shires in the build-up to the 2023 season, but what do the numbers tell us about its impact on the LV= County Championship ahead of the first Test of the summer?
Run-ratesIt was perhaps ambitious to expect the first phase of the county season to hit the heights of England’s most frenzied scoring, particularly with soft early-season pitches and a lively Dukes ball for 2023. Stokes’ England reached a crescendo in Pakistan, when they scored at 5.50 runs per over – the highest ever in a series of three or more Tests – but unsurprisingly that bar has proved tough to meet.
Division Two pace-setters Durham lead the way, scoring their 3,357 runs at a lively 4.20, but the only other side to go at more than four an over, Yorkshire, have had a very different experience. They are tracking at 4.09 but have scored only 2,229 runs in total and are winless in eighth place in the second tier.
Another eight teams are scoring at more that 3.50 an over, while Division One’s bottom club Northamptonshire are outliers having made their runs at a relatively pedestrian 2.82.
Individual performersStokes has repeatedly said where runs are concerned he is just as interested in ‘how?’ as ‘how many?’, challenging Test hopefuls to catch the eye with dashing displays. Durham wicketkeeper Ollie Robinson has done more than anyone else to live up to that billing, scoring 465 runs from 527 balls for a strike rate of 88.23 runs per 100 balls.
In the top flight two players already inked into the Test XI have carried the torch, Ben Duckett scoring 401 runs with a strike rate of 74.39 while Stokes’ new vice-captain Ollie Pope has 379 and 74.16. Unlike them, Somerset’s Tom Kohler-Cadmore has yet to clear the 500-ball mark for the season but his combination of 348 runs at 80.55 marks him out for attention.
Dan Lawrence, called up as batting cover for the Ireland Test, is some way behind on a strike rate of 57.26, while Lancashire’s Josh Bohannon has 471 runs at 67.96. Dom Sibley, once a fixture at the top of England’s Test line-up, looks a long way back with his strike rate of 43.71 placing him close to the bottom of the ladder.
Win, lose or drawA feature of England’s Test cricket over the past 12 months has been their stated aversion to draws. With an eye on entertainment and a belief that pushing hard for victory is worth the price of defeat, the McCullum era has effectively removed the idea of sharing the spoils.
While a few counties suggested they were willing to engage with the same philosophy, it has proved harder than expected. Heavy rain has wreaked havoc with fixtures, with some teams worse affected than others, while extending the number of runs required for bonus points has also made forcing results more taxing inside four days.
So far 25 games have been drawn out of 52 (11 in Division One, 14 in Division Two), with five from five for a well-fancied Lancashire side. Table-toppers Surrey and Durham are both rewarded for getting over the line four times in six attempts.
England’s summer ends in soggy fashion and prompts a call for innovation
Gloucestershire chief executive Will Brown has called for more innovation to combat the elements after England’s summer ended in soggy fashion with an abandoned one-day international against Ireland at Bristol.
Ben Duckett’s maiden century in this format underpinned England’s 280 for four off 31 overs but their innings in the final match of this Metro Bank series was interrupted by brief but torrential rain.
The players walked off the field at 2:48pm but the umpires’ decision to announce there would no further play at 3:21pm caught England captain Zak Crawley and Ireland counterpart Paul Stirling by surprise.
Several puddles formed on the outfield within minutes while the ground staff’s attempts to get the covers on were delayed – by umpires Mike Burns and Paul Reiffel hesitating before ushering the teams off – then hindered by gusts of wind, which meant a significant amount of water got on to the square.
Gloucestershire brought in more ground staff for the game but this was a fourth abandonment in a row in a men’s ODI at this venue, which has more basic protections to guard against the weather in contrast to its Test-hosting equivalents.
While the match extending past 30 overs meant no refunds for the paying public, Brown, who revealed rain the previous night had already left the ground with a high water table, believes more needs to be done to avoid a repeat of this situation at a venue which will host a men’s ODI on September 29, 2024.
“In some respects we were lucky to start when we did on time,” Brown said. “We always had the sense that if we had something similar to (Monday) night, 20-30 minutes of rain could be what killed it off.
“It is just gutting. We’ve had our fair share of rain offs such as in World Cups and you wonder if we give it a bit longer maybe it can dry out, but it is what it is.
“It worries me greatly that this is a sign of things to come. We’ve got a lot of cricket being played in September next year and with climate change we’ve seen heavy rain in June and July.
“I think the game needs to be thinking innovatively about how we get games on or prepare pitches and surfaces using different things to get cricket away.”
England celebrated a 1-0 win but the recriminations at a hasty and unsatisfactory conclusion continued, with the wisdom of holding international matches in the UK in September only increasing.
Just one of the three matches in this series – England prevailing by 48 runs at Trent Bridge on Saturday – reached a conclusion and Crawley confessed he was startled by the swift ending.
“It caught everybody by surprise,” Crawley said. “I was in the lunch room when the (umpires) said it was abandoned, I didn’t know. It caught us all by surprise when they came in to shake our hands.
“The ground was already a bit wet after the rain (the night before). It didn’t need a lot more to get abandoned. A lot of rain fell in not a long space of time. There was nothing anyone could do about it.”
Duckett’s unbeaten 107 from 78 deliveries came after Phil Salt had laid the foundations with an astonishing blitz, thumping seven fours and four sixes in his pyrotechnical 61 off 28 balls.
Crawley also contributed 51 off 42 balls and even though Craig Young was able to stifle England, taking three for 31 from seven impressive overs, Stirling was relieved that Ireland were saved by the weather.
“We were all pretty happy that the rain came but we weren’t expecting it to end the game,” he said.
“We thought we might get a bit of a rest and regroup, try to get out there and change it up a little bit. We weren’t expecting the game to be called off.”
Crawley took charge of a second-string side for this series as England’s World Cup stars are resting ahead of the defence of their crown getting under way in India next week.
“I’ve enjoyed it,” he added. “It was only really the one game I had to do anything but I enjoyed it and it made the fielding go quicker. It was a great honour.”
Marcus Trescothick says Andrew Flintoff ‘sprinkling gold-dust’ on England team
England assistant Marcus Trescothick has enjoyed witnessing Andrew Flintoff “grow back into Freddie” during his Ashes-winning team-mate’s stint with the national team.
Flintoff had been out of the public eye since a serious car accident while filming for Top Gear last December but earlier this month he was coaxed into joining England’s backroom staff in an unpaid capacity.
Several players have savoured being at close quarters with such a recognisable figure but Trescothick was already intimately acquainted not just with Freddie the cricketer but Flintoff the person.
While he has frequently been the butt of Flintoff’s jokes, Trescothick has watched on with admiration at the 45-year-old slowly regaining confidence and “sprinkling a bit of gold-dust around the team”.
“He hammers me more than anyone else,” said Trescothick with a smile. “I’m the first target for his banter at the moment but having him around has been superb, it really has. He’s been brilliant.
“Seeing him grow back into Freddie… obviously he’s been away from cricket for a long period of time but this is where it all starts and where it belongs for him. The guys have really taken to him.
“The couple of times he’s spoken in the changing room it’s been like ‘wow’. You can see the difference and I’ve seen the progression of him as a character, the way he talks and delivers messages to players has been superb.
“To have him sprinkling a bit of gold-dust around the team and having the younger players working with that has been invaluable. You can’t put a price on it.”
Flintoff was initially enlisted for four ODIs against New Zealand, after which the former England captain’s spell was expected to end, but he has hung around for the ongoing Metro Bank series versus Ireland.
England have selected a more inexperienced band of players for this series and there were four debutants in the second ODI on Saturday – effectively the opener after last week’s Headingley washout.
Tom Hartley had the distinction of being given his maiden cap ahead of England’s 48-run win by Flintoff, who told his fellow Lancastrian in the team huddle: “This will change your life forever.”
“You become more comfortable, don’t you,” said Trescothick, who was an England team-mate of Flintoff’s between 2000 and 2006. “This is what we know, this is what we’ve grown up with for so many years.
“Once you come to your comfortable environment, you know what goes on and you understand the place, people have respect for what he has done and enjoy seeing him improving.
“That’s really good from our point of view. If we as players and squads and cricket in general keep doing that for people who have fallen on tougher times then great, we’re doing something right.”
Trescothick and the rest of the England coaching staff will oversee the final ODI against Ireland at Bristol on Tuesday before embarking to the subcontinent for the World Cup on Wednesday evening.
England resting the squad that will travel to India for the defence of their title, starting in less than a fortnight, has offered those on the fringes a chance to push their case for more regular spots.
Teenage leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed continues to make waves in an England shirt, impressing at the weekend with four for 54, ripping the heart out of Ireland’s middle order at Trent Bridge.
“I like the way he keeps relishing opportunities and keeps doing the business,” Trescothick added. “As a younger player there’s a lot more scrutiny on him, obviously the style of cricketer he is.
“He comes into the Test team and gets five wickets (against Pakistan in Karachi last December), he comes into this format and does well. Hopefully that carries on.
“Rehan is entertaining in the changing room, enjoyable in and around it. A little bit cheeky at times which is good.
“I think you can see that coming through when he bowls. It’s part of his persona.”
ECB unable to commit to ICEC report’s equal pay targets for men and women
Equal pay targets for men and women set out in a major report on equality, diversity and inclusion in cricket cannot be committed to yet by the England and Wales Cricket Board.
The Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report published in June said women in the sport were treated as “second class citizens” and recommended that the ECB strive to ensure equal pay on average at domestic level by 2029 and at international level by 2030.
However, while the ECB is determined to close the gap, it has not committed itself to the report’s timeline for achieving equality.
Chief executive Richard Gould said: “(Equal pay on average) is something that we would like to achieve. We know though that we need to accelerate the growth of the commercial element of the women’s game.
“Broadcast value is the key determinant in any of these sports, and that is something we are going to have to deliver on.
“That’s why we want to be open and honest and say that’s not necessarily something we can do within those timescales, but we’ll have a good go.
“Most of our current major broadcast contract runs until the end of 2028. We know we’ve got a journey on there.
“Can we do it in one broadcast cycle? I don’t know is the answer. But we’re going to do whatever we can.”
ECB deputy chief executive Clare Connor said there was a “live conversation” ongoing about England Women playing a Test match at Lord’s, after the ICEC report highlighted that one has not been played there to date.
The ICEC report, which was based on evidence gathered from over 4,200 individuals and organisations connected to cricket, found racism was entrenched in the sport, and that women routinely experienced sexism and misogyny.
It also found the sport to be elitist, highlighting cost barriers within the talent pathway and also issues around cricket’s regulatory and complaints procedures.
The ECB set out its formal response on Monday which included commitments to:
:: Invest £25million per year above the revenue it receives from the women’s game into growing women’s and girls’ cricket at all levels.
:: Removing finance as a barrier in the talent pathway by 2025.
:: Developing action plans to tackle specific barriers facing state school and black children.
:: Setting up a new Cricket Regulator independent of the ECB, to act as prosecutor in disciplinary cases, in time for the 2024 season, and commissioning annual assurance checks to ensure the Regulator is truly independent.
:: Enhancing EDI standards for counties, including more ambitious targets for gender and ethnic diversity.
:: Assessing counties’ performance against minimum EDI standards, and having the power to reallocate matches from venues if there is evidence of non-compliance.
Gould added: “I reaffirm our absolute commitment that cricket will strive to become the most inclusive sport in England and Wales.
“This response represents a set of actions that will accelerate and intensify our work to make cricket a game for everyone, actions that cricket can deliver and fund within an achievable timeframe.
“It builds on a huge amount of work which is already under way right across the network.
“Cricket hasn’t got it right in the past, but this is an opportunity to move forwards together.
“I’d urge everyone to now come together, to put their energy and effort into delivering these actions, and to playing their part in ensuring cricket becomes England and Wales’s most inclusive team sport.”
The MCC is set to respond separately later on Monday to an ICEC recommendation that state schools finals days replace the annual Eton v Harrow and Oxford v Cambridge matches at Lord’s.
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