Date-stamped : 04 Oct94 - 18:23 Christopher Martin-Jenkins reflects on a vintage year. THIS has been a season of curious contrasts: wet in May, espe- cially on Saturdays when club and school cricketers most needed the sun; dry for the major games of mid-summer; wet again at the end after Warwickshire had won most of what there was to win. There have been 24 double centuries, one personal score of 501, 40 examples of teams scoring 450-plus in the championship and 56 players with averages of 40 or above. Yet Richard Johnson became the second youngest man to take all 10 in an innings and Devon Malcolm almost joined him in the Oval Test. The Tests were just a little confusing, too. New Zealand were beaten, but not by as much as had been hoped and only by means of the closest of shaves at Lord`s. Against South Africa, horrible defeat north of the river became glorious victory south of it. After that Oval Test, Mike Atherton might say that there is no earthly reason why Eng- land should not regain the Ashes. But he has learnt to choose his words more carefully than that. Atherton`s own season rather underlines the ups and downs. In 16 innings in the championship for Lancashire he could score only 333 runs at an average of 24. In 10 Test innings for England he made more runs, 480, at exactly double the average. Given an 86 against Cambridge, he still made only 899 runs overall. Brian Lara, who had a longer winter`s cricket and who, throughout the year, has suffered personal scru- tiny almost as intense, scored 2,066 runs at 90. Lara will have been vice-captain to Courtney Walsh in India before he meets Atherton again next summer, and if the young fans hounded him with requests for autographs here (most of them graciously grant- ed), imagine what a sanctuary his room will seem in the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Calcutta. When it comes to adulation, he may not have seen anything yet - a consoling thought, perhaps, for Atherton as he prepares to handle all that goes with being captain in a high-profile series against Australia. Less comforting is the experience of Richie Richard- son, for whom the heat became so hot that he has left the kitchen. This burn-out threat is a growing worry, given adminis- trators who are either too greedy, or too stupid, or too weak to see that the only answer is (and has been for years) to limit each country to a maximum of 12 Tests and 15 one-day internation- als. Angus Fraser was deemed to be too tired to tour Australia, so Malcolm alone of the England fast bowlers has lasted from one winter to the next, and that partly because he was dropped between the first and last Tests of the summer. It is not actual- ly true, as is widely supposed, that tours are longer than they used to be. Those who left for Australia by sea in September and got back home again in May will laugh at the notion. They are more intense, however, and there are no winters off for the regu- lars. Many, of course, would give their last shirt even to be an occasional. If John Carr never plays for England, he can feel proud that an extraordinary burst of form, which brought him 854 runs at that average between Aug 5 and the end of the season, enabled him to finish top of the national averages. John Em- burey believes that Carr`s innings against Gloucestershire is as good as he has seen from a Middlesex player. It can only be good that Gatting, Gooch, Hick, Thorpe and Crawley have all finished in the top 20 of the averages. The two other specialist batsmen going to Australia, Atherton and Stewart, have not, but have probably suf- fered a reaction to their often heroic efforts in the Caribbean. Moreover, Atherton had his additional worries after giving the match referee a sifted version of the facts at Lord`s and Stewart had a benefit to concern him, not to mention offers from two other counties to leave Surrey. The increased incidence of inducements by one county to leave another are a worry. For every player who announces a change of clubs in the next few weeks there is at least one other who has re- ceived an offer during the season against TCCB regulations. An attempt was made, for exam- ple, to woo Ian Salisbury away from a Sussex club which has treated him well. HUMAN nature being what it is, there may not be any more the Board can do about this. They may care to reflect, however, that if they give way to the clamour for two divisions of the championship, these football- style approaches will only become more common. Championship cricket is not as soft as it is made out to be and if more needle is required for some matches later in the season, the answer is larger prize-money for the top six and at least some money, stee- ply graded, for every place below. Whenever cricket either has too much or too little spice, the reasons always lie with the pitches and the captains. Warwickshire had a better square this year thanks to Steve Rouse and his staff, and enterprising captains in Dermot Reeve and Tim Munton. Their unprecedented treble (given a different fall of the coin they would probably have foiled Worcestershire in the NatWest as well) was the result of good planning, confident, po- sitive cricket and the fast scoring which gave an ordinary bowl- ing attack time to win matches. Fast scoring was not solely for Lara. Despite Johnson`s all 10 for 45 against Derbyshire, Min Patel`s 90 wickets and the outstanding returns of Curtly Am- brose (77 wickets at 14) and Walsh (89 at 17), the story for much of the season was of free scoring and too little graft, especially when teams ran into trouble. The placid covered pitches on which most county cricket is now played have produced any number of attractive, front-foot batsmen who are suddenly revealed as technically inept when occasionally they come up against a tricky pitch or a bowler who moves the ball more than usual. Points for a draw and further encouragement to groundsmen to produce pitches which turn by the third afternoon are needed if championship cricket is not to be dominated by fast bowlers and dashers in helmets. The only spinners in the top 20 in the averages are Patel and Kim Barnett, who picked up 13 wickets in 54 overs. Administrators must not close their minds against a return to uncovered pitches, though the evidence of recent Tests at the Oval suggests that England teams now play their best cricket on hard, true pitches, not the slow, damp seamers on which they once excelled. Derbyshire pitches were once typical. This year, despite having Malcolm, Phillip DeFreitas, England`s bowler of the season, and Dominic Cork, the county could finish only 17th, but each was often absent for different reasons. Only 27 points separated Not- tinghamshire in third place from Somerset in 11th, and had Lan- cashire not had 25 points deducted for a pitch which started un- fit, they would have finished third. The TCCB has more to think about than fine-tuning the county game. By December, the executive committee should have come to conclusions about how to begin to spend the income from television which, at L15 mil- lion a year from 1995, will be exactly three times greater than at present. The challenge facing Dennis Silk as he takes on the chairmanship of the Board on Oct 1 is daunting. If the new, all-embracing governing body envisaged by the Griffiths committee is to work, it will have to begin by rationalising the structure of youth cricket. Thanks The Daily Telegraph. Contributed by Ram.Krishnan (rkrishna@garnet.acns.fsu.edu)