3 minute read
A fortnight into the County Championship and it’s hard to weigh the performances of several England Test hopefuls. In many cases who they play for seems to have had almost as much influence on outcomes as how they’re playing.
Take, for example, Jamie Smith. This time last week we pointed out that he’d most likely already retained his Test spot with a hundred even though the worth of that hundred was tempered by being scored on a less than challenging pitch.
Skullwatch: Jamie Smith looks safe then
Last week’s featherbed now looks more like one of those thin, self-inflating camping mats after Surrey’s home game against Leicestershire, in which Smith’s first innings 166 and second innings 89 were scored either side of the visitors’ 691 all out. That’s quite a total. Perhaps Surrey might like to rethink their seasons-long spin policy of relying on either part-timers or short term imports on zero hours contracts?
The upshot is that even if Smith is the top scorer in Division 1, his average of 99 is surpassed by team-mate and theoretical rival, Ben Foakes, who is averaging 127.50 thanks to a couple of not outs. Ollie Pope’s record also has a healthy look about it with a hundred and a fifty and an average of 74. But what does any of this actually mean?
Elsewhere, Ollie Robinson’s 2026 campaign to distract England from the fact he’s a bit of a bell-end1 by taking bucketloads of wickets appears to have got off to a solid start. His 10 wickets at 15.40 does however only put him third in Sussex’s averages behind the preposterously-named Fynn Hudson-Prentice (8 wickets at 15.25) and Henry Crocombe (13 wickets at 13.76).
These three have however helped Sussex pretty much entirely overhaul the 12-point penalty that was imposed this season after the county was forced to ask the ECB for a loan.
And finally, openers
What do you make of the situation here? Ben Duckett’s made 28 runs, while the man who was to our mind the best choice to replace Zak Crawley as his partner, Haseeb Hameed, has only made 62 runs in four innings, also for Nottinghamshire.
Crawley himself has made 60 runs in four innings in Division 2 – and really they were worth even less than that. Half of his knocks were on the same pitch where no Northamptonshire batter who came to the crease failed to reach three figures.
It’s time for some unsettling disloyalty: If England’s leaders aren’t being ejected then some of the players will be… but which ones?
Durham’s Ben McKinney was loitering in the vicinity during the Ashes and he made 244 last week. Even accounting for the reduced value of a second division run, that’s pretty handy.
One way or another, cases are being built. We’ll be able to weigh all this stuff a lot more accurately and hand down some verdicts in a few weeks time.
- With Robinson currently out of the side and Ben Duckett having seemingly taken the hint to stop airing so much delusional madness, who is England’s current, official Bollocks-Talker In Chief? Is there a vacancy?
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The post If you want to bat for England, bat for Surrey. If you want to bowl for England, bowl for Sussex. And if you want to open for England… first appeared on King Cricket.