Date-stamped : 10 Nov93 - 19:54 English Season '93 Four-Day Game on Way to Reaching Goal - C.Martin-Jenkins (Pakistani Cricketer, Oct 93) It is raining as I reflect on the crowded events of the last five months, yet I find it impossible to feel depressed. This may be incurable optimism at the end of a summer in which England's hopes of regaining the Ashes were rapidly and complete- ly dashed. Perhaps it was the nature of the Australian defeat at the Oval, or the rousing victories by Derbyshire and Warwickshire in the two Lord's finals or that remarkable finale to the county season at Canterbury on Sunday. When the sun shone so sweetly on a crowd of 12,000 even those nauseous costumes did not seem to matter. They were but one aspect of a season of almost revolutionary change in domestic cricket. Whether it was necessary we may nev- er know, just as no-one can say with absolute certainty when the Gillette Cup was introduced in 1963 that it "saved" the county game. It gave its new life, that is certain, whereupon our ad- ministrators overegged the pudding by giving us three limited- overs competitions. A generation on, it may be concluded with conviction that this is one too many. There are two views of the conclusions to be drawn from the Ashes series as far as county cricket is concerned. One is that this was an unusually strong Australian batting side, one which could afford to leave Dean Jones at home and still produce the top four batsmen in the first-class averages; and which also pos- sessed two genuine bowling match-winners in Merv Hughes and Shane Warne. The other is that the results of the Tests, and of the tourists' games against counties, proved the latter to be feeble and soft. It is worth remembering that there have been other periods when powerful Australian sides have made English cricket look woefully weak, notably in the period after both world wars. Nonetheless, it was the technical differences which stood out clearly to be ignored. English batsmen tended to shuffle across the crease rather than to move positively forward or back to hit straight through the line of the ball; our fast bowlers pitched generally too short and our spinners neither spun the ball enough nor bowled a suffi- ciently attacking line. These are faults directly attributable to a form of the game in which steering the ball square into gaps pays dividends and in which an analysis of nought for 30 is often deemed to be more ef- fective than four for 40. It is not, in fact, more effective because captains too seldom seem to understand that the best way of containing a batsman is to get him out, but the point is that that it is embedded deep in the unconscious of all bowlers bred in the United Kingdom that stopping runscoring is the primary duty. The message to coaches lower down is to ask not how many runs did a bowler concede but how many wickets did he take? Is he ca- pable of unusual pace or genuine spin? And of the batsmen, within reason, not just does he score runs but how does he get them? Junior cricket, incidentally, has a good season, with some prolific schoolboys and a heartening win the Under-19 Test series against the West Indies. The whole youth scene is still a many-chorded lyre whose strings badly need pulling more tightly together, but the grass roots generally are being better nurtured. Even in Liverpool, where I was told the game had died, St. Margaret's High School has matches at all levels and the headmaster has already applied for 40 tickets for next year's South Africa Test at Lord's. The four-day championship has been designed to make the essen- tial county competition tougher and a better breeding-ground for Test cricketers. It is on the way to achieving that goal, so far without any serious detriment to the entertainment value of the games, which, because there are five fewer than there were in re- cent seasons, is a crucial matter to county members. Some facts are instructive: of 153 matches overall, 104 were won. That is 67.94 percent compared with 53 percent of three-day 'result' matches, contained no declarations, compared with 54 percent this season (83 matches). In no fewer than 16 games this year the full 40 wickets fell. This compares with 7 last year and only two in 1991. This partly reflects pitches which still veered unhappily in too many coun- ties between boringly slow and low to unacceptably helpful to bowlers of various types. Seven matches ended in two days, 26 in three, and of 48 draws, 23 lost at least a day. Middlesex ran away with Britannic Assurance's first prize and deserved to do so. In the end they won 'only' 11 of their 17 matches, but this was a greater proportion of the games they have played than they have ever managed in winning 11 previous cham- pionships. It was gratifying that the most important reason for their success was the spin partnership of John Emburey and Phil Tufnell. One of the hopes for four-day cricket was that spinners would be encouraged and that batsmen's techniques against them, so dreadfully exposed in India and again by Warne and Tim May this season, will begin to improve. Worcestershire and Glamorgan won only two fewer games each. Glamorgan's success on all fronts has been widely praised but Tim Curtis's captaincy at Worcester, and his personal success with the bat, have not received sufficient praise. Graham Gooch, the only man to pass 2000 runs, Mike Gatting, Kim Barnett, Alan Wells, Hugh Morris, Tim Robinson, Martyn Moxon, and Allan Lamb are other captains who have led by example with the bat. Indeed, it is striking how experienced players have led the way in most county teams, none more so than Emburey. You have to go down the national batting averages to Graeme Hick in 12th place before you can find an England qualified player under 30. What does this say, I wonder, about the wisdom of choosing a relative- ly inexperienced touring team to enter the Caribbean cauldron? Four old favorites have called it a day - Ian Botham, Viv Richards, Malcolm Marshall and Derek Randall, great entertainers every one. Lesser lights have gone out too, some, alas, not by their own choice. This is always a poignant time of year. On a lighter note, one wonders what Derek Pringle, a faithful old soldier, certainly, thought when he read in the birthday list of The Times last month that he was 67? A final point. At the TCCB meeting next month, there is bound to be discussion about two divisons of the championship. Of many intelligent letters I receive at the The Daily Telegraph, this heartfelt plea from a Lymington reader should be heeded: "The second division would soon lose Test players, young Test pros- pects, the best overseas players and support because it would be- come second-class cricket. There would be a transfer market and the county set-up as we know it would disappear." A regional tournament early in the season for England-qualified players only would be another matter: it has worked for rugby union, but the concentration of the best players in a few clubs in that sport is less desirable; 42 out of 46 players in England's training squad come from only five clubs. Somehow cricket must find the balance between raising and main- taining a strong England cricket team and preserving the charm and variety of county cricket. Contributed by Shash (sshah@*.acns.nwu.edu)