Category: County Cricket

The Drawn Game, so hated by Ben Stokes and the Baz-ballers, creates tension and excitement in Red Ball Cricket. International red ball cricketers would do well to treat draws with more respect.

The first round of the Championship featured 4 Draws on Day 4. The drama came at Taunton and Lords – Worcestershire were 9 wickets down and Lancashire were 8 down. Chelmsford was less dramatic with Surrey only 6 down at the close, and it was comfortable at Edgbaston where Warwickshire just closed down with just 2 wickets lost. Looking at those more exciting finishes, I followed the Lancashire one most closely, and looking at the scorecards, I think this was probably the most exciting game overall. For much of this fixture, all results were possible, but it did not quite get to the last ball – the players shook hands after the penultimate ball because Lancashire were 8 down and so the draw was a certainty. Over at Taunton, Tom Hineley had to come out at number 11 with 8.3 overs left to bat. Every one of those balls would have been an event because Somerset just needed the one wicket, which they failed to get.

In Test Match Cricket, we do not see many draws anymore. Ben Stokes says he believes it is more important to ensure a result than to salvage draws. To be fair to Stokes, he has stuck to this – even at Old Trafford in 2023 when so much of the game was lost to rain, England were not a million miles away from getting a last minute victory (and for this article, I will resist bringing up the issue of so called ‘bad light’ when the floodlights are on). What Stokes conveniently ignores is the fact that securing a draw at that Manchester game in 2023 meant that the Australians were guaranteed to retain The Ashes. Conversely, England’s failure to secure a draw at the same location in 2019 condemned them to not being able to regain those Ashes.

As I sat and watched the last hour or so of the superb livestream from Lords, while also watching the score at Taunton, I was taken back to some amazing Test Match Draws, games which form some of my most memorable and exciting memories of watching cricket. In 1998 against South Africa, England had lost badly in the Second Test Match at Lords and looked to be losing the third at Old Trafford, but Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart started a fightback. Despite a fine 160 by Stewart, it was still left to Angus Fraser batting at number eleven, in combination with a defiant Robert Croft, to block out a final over by the brilliant Allan Donald. That game was more significant than the famous Mike Atherton inspired draw at Johannesburg 3 years before because it changed the entire dynamic of a series that England would go onto claim 2-1. Great days.

In 2009, England won the Ashes, but they were only able to do so because Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar batted through 10 overs at Cardiff in the first test match to secure a draw that England did not deserve – they had been hopeless all game. It is extremely unlikely that England would have dominated the following game at Lords if they had lost at Cardiff – and they would not have been able to come back from being 2-0 down. Indeed, that England side would go onto secure two draws in the winter, again against South Africa. One thing I would want to say to Stokes is that England would never have got to number one in the world in 2011 without the ability to dig in and prevent losses on those bad days.

I could go on and on. What about that amazing innings by Ricky Ponting, again at Old Trafford but this time in 2005, which made it just that little bit harder for England to regain the Ashes, thus making the series even more exciting. Or the Brisbane Test Match in 2010/11 when England scored 517/1. Avoiding defeat in that fixure – where England still have not won a game since 1986 – was a huge part of the victory in the entire series.

And of course, these games stick in my memory because they were really exciting. At Old Trafford in 1998, the ground was sparsely populated on Day 5 – a Monday of course – but it filled up more and more as people came out of school and work and the draw became a realistic prospect. You only needed to watch skipper Stewart and coach David Lloyd on the balcony at the point when England could not loose to see how much it meant. At Cardiff it was a full house and nobody left the ground on the last day. Anybody watching would remember the drama around England’s time wasting tactics as gloves and drinks kept being delivered to the middle by the England 12th man.

I do know that endless ‘bore-draws’ is not what we want either. I suspect the other two draws yesterday were lacking excitement. For Surrey, Dom Sibley dug in. Like Paul Collingwood at Cardiff in 2009, the situation dictated someone dig-in. The county fans expect that of the teams they support. Who knows, at the end of the season, that small number of points separating victory and defeat might be the difference between being a championship winner and a runner-up. For Lancashire, it might be that those points make the difference between promotion and staying in Division 2. I would love to see England look a bit more closely at this. Yes, the priority is to win, but if you can not win you should do everything you can to avoid losing. Sometimes a draw will be exiting, but even if not, it might be the difference between winning and losing a series.

A word on Lancashire. As a fan, it feels that this was an ominous start. Lancashire has broken up the one part of the batting order that has worked for a few years, moving Luke Wells down to 6 in a bid to spread the batting experience around. To the same end, overseas signing Marcus Harris is batting at 4. The batting showed some promise but still looks dependent on Keaton Jennings, Harris and Wells. More is expected of Josh Bohannon, at one time spoken of for England. Equally, the bowling shows promise but lacks firepower, with the like of Saqib Mahmood and Luke Wood apparently focussed on the One Day game. It is to be hoped that James Anderson is able to recover from injury and make a contribution. Lancashire had a poor 2024, but in 2023, they played quite well. In both years, Lancashire were often unable to take 20 wickets. They are considered favourites for promotion this year – but they will need to take 20 wickets.

Nobody really is thinking about the cricket fans.  All the talk is about player power, franchises and administrators. In the English domestic game, it’s all about counties and county chairs and The Hundred. My experience is that nobody is thinking about the fans and spectators.

I am a Season Ticker Holder at Lancashire. I have done the maths – once I go to a handful of T20 Blast matches and The Hundred, along with the discounted International Tickets, it’s not bad value for money. But my intention was to also go to lots of other games. However, its mid June and I have been to Old Trafford just twice in 2024.

County Championship

The only good thing about the fixture list at the start of the season is that the games started on Fridays and so took in both days of the weekend. And I suppose they did at least come after we changed the clocks.

The first fixture was against champions Surrey and should have been a wonderful fixture, but given that it started on the 4th April, it was almost certainly doomed to be a weather impacted draw. Its been a dismal season weatherwise, but early April in Manchester would be pushing it in the best of summers (though ironically would have been ok in the Covid summer of 2020).  The amateur football season was still in full swing, but despite my son’s fixtures, I was able to get to 2 sessions of this game – until the rain came.

Bizarrely, and frustratingly, we then had 2 away fixtures on the bounce (Essex and Hampshire – so not a realistic option for travel) so the next home fixture was in May, where Lancashire were battered by Kent. It already looked like Lancashire’s 4 day season was going to be grim).

This was followed by another away fixture against Nottinghamshire, before the next home fixture which was at Blackpool. This was actually a rare nice weekend (relatively), and Lancashire play the long form cricket better at the outgrounds. Lancashire played really well and deserved to beat Durham. This game was one I would have travelled to, and I was just unlucky with the diary. Typically, I could have attended the next round – the two consecutive away games cancelled out here by 2 consecutive home fixtures – but it was another rain ruined fixture against Worcestershire.

And that was that for the first part of the championship. Not much fun for fans, and totally pointless from the point of view of England selection.

T20 Blast

You would think it would be a bit easier to follow the T20 fixtures. However……

The first round was on the 30th May. It’s a good job it was half term given the 1900 start time for the men’s game. Lancashire rightly made a lot of fuss about this being a ‘double header’ with the Lancashire Thunder game. Thunder just got past Central Sparks, before Lancashire beat Durham well. The problam was the extremely long waiting time betweem the games – not at all family friendly. County Cricket can learn an easy lesson here from The Hundred.

The next evening, Lancashire were away at Worcestershire, where they lost, but I went to Taunton with my family to see Somerset play. We were on the way to Cornwall. The 1830 start at Taunton made more sense, and Somerset played well to just past Essex – it was a good night. It is worth noting, however, that this was also a double header, so the earlier start time clearly was possible even in the case of the double header. However, it was not a 1830 start everywhere – looking around the country on that night, games started at 1730, 1830 and 1900. I have no idea what time randomiser the ECB use for the fixture list, but the right time for fans is surely 1830.

The following week clashed with our Cornwall holiday. That in itself is fine, but its incredible to see Lancashire having 3 games in that week. Obviously, all three of those games were at different times of day.

What’s next?

Over the next week or so, Lancashire have 3 away fixtures in the T20 cup, before 2 rounds of Championship Cricket. One of these is a home fixture but its being played in Southport, meaning that no men’s cricket will take place at Old Trafford until 7th July when the men play Worcestershire again (they are away at Northamptonshire before this).  They have 3 consecutive home games – 2 in 3 days at one point, before the One Day Cup and Hundred take over.

How on earth fans can be expected to deal with all this is beyond me. I yearn for the days of a game every Friday night which we had in the early days of T20 and – do you know what? – it worked.

It seems churlish to criticise Lancashire for coming second in every competition in 2022. For much of the season, they were brilliant, but the fact is that Lancashire has not claimed any silverware since winning the T20 Blast in 2015. In a 7 year period, Lancashire ought to be winning something.

I decided to try and rate Lancashire’s performance in recent years, which has certainly included variety. Before we go into this though, a few points need to be made.

Off the field

This type of analysis has limitations. Results are not the only thing for a club like Lancashire. The ground has to function 365 days a year – it has to be used and it has to generate revenue. Lancashire had the extra challenge resulting from the cancellation of the 2021 India test match – and of course, India almost certainly would have thrashed England in 2021 but they ended up losing the rescheduled game (at Edgbaston) to a ‘new’ England team.

Looking after the ground is one thing, but what about the players? Mentioning India reminds us that players have to be recruited, paid and kept at the club – which is an increasing challenge in the modern world of franchises. When a County has the players, they then have to be looked after – physically and mentally.

One thing Lancs have done quite well is encouraging local talent. A quick look at the 2023 Playfair Cricket Annual tells me that Lancashire has a squad of 28 (Gloucestershire have 23, Surrey 33 – so this would appear to be middle ground). Of Lancashire’s 28, 18 are from relatively local areas (Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria). Nottinghamshire gets a lot of criticism for this – and it must be said that only 12 of the Nottinghamshire squad are ‘ relatively local’ – though at the moment the number who have moved from Leicestershire is low!

We must also mention another obligation for any Cricket Club – but County Cricket especially is under the spotlight now when it comes to inclusivity. Discrimination must not be tolerated – so far Lancashire have not been impacted in the way of Yorkshire and Essex, but it is hard to imagine that stories will not appear at some point about things that might have been tolerated in the past. Improvement is still needed.

On the pitch

For the rest of this piece, we will be talking about results and stats.

All that being said here, I wanted to form a reasoned judgement as to Lancashire’s recent on-field performance, and I chose to do this with a simple RAG (Red, Amber, Green) – based purely on season results:

• Each tournament would be rated separately for each year
• In the County Championship, a place in the top three can be considered a good result, and would therefore result in a Green score.
• Lower-placed Championship results above the Division 1 relegation zone can be considered ‘Acceptable’ and would result in an Amber.
• For a team with Lancashire’s resources, we have to the Championship Division 2 (and relegation) as a failure, resulting in a Red. This means that 2019 is still considered a failure.
• When it comes to One Day Cricket, expectations are high due to Lancashire’s pedigree – though the Glory Days of the 90s are long gone. Despite that, we can only say that a campaign has been successful if it has involved an appearance in a Final. It seems harsh – but it takes a Final to get a One Day Green.
• Reaching the One Day knockouts is Acceptable, no better, and is therefore Amber.
• Failure to get past the Group Stages must be considered a Fail, and means Red.

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	County Championship	T20 Blast	One Day Cup
2022	2nd	2nd	2nd
2021	2nd	QF	Group – 4th
2020	3rd	SF
2019	Div 2 1st	QF	SF
2018	7th – relegated	QF	Group – 6th
2017	2nd	Group – 7th	Group – 4th
2016	7th	Group – 7th	Group – 9th
2015	Div 2 2nd	Winners	Group – 5th

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Lancs need to win more games

Yes obviously! But here, I am really talking about the Championship. In 2023 we now have had two rounds of the Championship and Lancashire has two draws. In the first round, Lancashire had to dig in for the draw having been mainly outclassed by Surrey. In the second, they were well-placed to beat Essex, but even with James Anderson playing, were not able to do so. The weather played a part, but Essex was only 4 down at the end.

Back to my 2023 Playfair, and immediately you see some strange statistics. Lancashire, like Surrey, only lost 1 Championship fixture but with 6 Draws, one more than Surrey, drew more than anyone except Northamptonshire, who lost 5 games. You might be tempted to assume that the issue is that Lancashire did not take enough wickets, but the strange thing is that they scored 39 bonus bowling points.

No doubt, the Manchester rain cost key opportunities to win games and perhaps added to the Draw tally – and that might also explain why Hampshire came third despite winning even more games than Surrey – perhaps not so many weather-impacted draws on the South Coast.

Whatever the reason for the draws, if Lancashire had managed to convert a couple of high scoring draws (Yorkshire comes to mind) into wins they would have beaten Surrey and won the Championship.

A word about pitches – some people might note that Old Trafford always supplies great pitches, and those people might wonder if that leads to Draws. Good pitches have not led to many draws involving England recently – and we will move on to talking about the batters.

Players need to Kick On

Can some of the individuals in the team kick on? Looking at the first class fixtures for 2022, only 5 batters have an average of 40 or more. The openers, Keaton Jennings and Luke Wells, formed an impressive partnership (average 72 and 52 respectively), but these are the only 2 with batting averages over 50. If we compare this again to Surrey, but for consistency restrict it to players who scored over 300 runs, Surrey have 6 batters, but more notable is that 3 of those have averages over 70. One of those 2 is Ollie Pope. Lancashire’s Pope equivalent is obviously Josh Bohannon, whose 2022 figures are fine, but over a quarter of his season’s runs came in his 231 against Gloucestershire.

Bowling is a similar story. Hassan Ali and Anderson have good statistics but only played a small number of matches. Only Tom Bailey took more than 50 wickets, and Matt Parkinson just 33 – and Old Trafford’s great pitches are good for bowlers and batters.

For Lancashire to take a trophy in any tournament, a couple of players are going to have to have an absolutely stellar season. Keaton Jennings this year will have the added pressure of Captaincy, so at least one of Bohannon, Steven Croft and Dane Vilas will need to make a lot of runs. Bohannon might also need to look at his strike rate – his 231 came off 467 balls, which was ok when Lancashire only had to bat once. Perhaps the problem is not so much the bowlers, as the time left in the game?

Saying that, another good season for Bailey will need to be backed up by Will Williams, Luke Wood and Parkinson. Parkinson has slipped off England’s radar – but a few 5 wicket hauls would change all that.

Under pressure?

It is hard to throw this one at the Lancashire team, who only lost 1 Championship Game and made the Final of two knockout tournaments. However, when we consider the One Day finals, it is something Lancashire need to think about. How could they approach the high-pressure scenarios a bit better?

In the One Day Cup against Kent, Lancashire chasing were 126/2 off 21 overs, and had 8 balls left when they were bowled out for 285 – they only needed another 21 runs. In the T20 Blast final it was also a chase, and it was 104/4 in the 13th over. Several big shots were attempted which failed, and also we saw 2 run-outs. The striking thing is that all of Jennings, Croft, Vilas and Luke Wells got past 20 – just one of them needed to be around at the end.

I would not want this to be overthought – Kent and Hampshire deserved to win these games. But at times, a lack of experience showed, and some poor decisions were made too. We cannot use the lack of experience excuse again this year.

Summary

Writing the summary is a lot easier than putting it into practice. Lancashire were impressive in 2022 and the players should be applauded. It is not easy to keep a high standard, particularly on cold days in April and September.

To win the Championship is going to need a couple of players to have spectacular seasons. To win the One Day tournaments needs the consistency of 2022, plus some slightly better decision-making in the finals.

It is harsh. Lancs had a great 2022. But the fans want to see some silverware.

The problem with English Cricket fans now is that they are divided by The Hundred. Hundred fans want to constantly ‘ram it down everyone else’s throats’ – every fixture last year was combined with endless ‘this is the most exciting cricket ever’ messages on social media, which ‘really wound up’ the ‘anti-hundred’. Now the message says ‘The Hundred could never be as good as the Blast’. Once again we have two hopeless extremes.

This year I have so far been to two T20 fixtures at Old Trafford, watched a couple on Sky and also looked at various Live Streams (why are Sky not showing more?). I have seen some exciting moments including a Roses tie at Old Trafford. But I have also seen some periods of dull cricket and some pretty poor presentation. That abysmal effort by Leicestershire against Derbyshire did little to defend the case of County Cricket against the apparently ‘Perfect Franchise’ – Leicester and Derby are sides that need to justify their existence more than ever.

Presentation

I am not ‘anti-hundred’. I did enjoy The Hundred fixtures I attended last year, and my (then 5-year old) son loved it. The Hundred did not get it all right, but it did show some of the potential in terms of presentation, most obviously in the graphics and stage management – yes, I did not like The Hundred graphics but the idea of consistency at ground and game is obvious.

That being said, I wish we had just added these values to the existing T20, rather than created a new type of game. However, I suspect The Hundred is here to stay. The best way to safeguard the future of County Cricket is to make the ‘product’ better than The Hundred, and it is the counties that will have to do this, not the ECB.

To that end, ‘the Blast’ lacks ‘pizzazz’. At Old Trafford, the music played between the overs is sometimes the same as it was 20 years ago. At Old Trafford, we could not hear the interviews and announcements where we were sat in the first game – the PA system was not up to it, but this was better in the second fixture. The ‘countdown’ and entry of the players and teams is a bit of a damp squib. Things are a bit slow-moving. So much of this could be easily fixed.

The idea of the bands performing within the arena during breaks is slightly galling to the traditional fan – I yearn for quietness between overs – but it is good for budding bands and provides some more for young children to be entertained by.

Can we take the best bits of both competitions and make 1 perfect tournament? That would take the ECB and Counties to work together. Now that’s a thought.

What about the Cricket itself?

It is hard as a fan. Your views on what is going on are impacted by your own team’s performance. And the fact is that whatever the format, whatever the game, you will have passages of ‘less interesting sport’. The two ‘Lancs’ games I have attended were of similar formats in that Lancashire batted first, set a target that could have been 5-10 runs higher and then looked like a beaten team until a late collapse. Yorkshire collapsed but scraped the tie, Worcestershire fell away to some good bowling by Richard Gleeson.

Both of these games featured a period around the tenth over where the chasing team appeared to be coasting to victory. It was a bit dull. I am not quite sure what the answer to this is, but perhaps we need a little more imagination around bowling quotas and field restrictions to avoid that feeling of a team ‘coasting’. That being said, Lancashire are quite good at strangling a team. As soon as the batting team needed runs slightly more quickly, a collapse came. However, I cannot escape a feeling that the cricket still could be better quality. It needs to be ‘live’ for longer.

What about Lancs

Lancashire seem to be getting going as the season goes on. With Phil Salt, Liam Livingstone and Tim David they have ‘serious’ batting power. Perhaps the concern is the backup to these guys – though Keaton Jennings is able to find ways to score quickly at the start, Steven Croft and Dane Vilas have struggled a bit to keep things moving. However, Lancashire have posted scores around 180, so I do not think we need to worry about the batting.

Lancashire at times look short of a bowler. Teams so far have slightly milked Matt Parkinson, avoiding too many risks. Richard Gleeson has looked good, as had Luke Wood at times. It remains to be seen if the loss of Saqib Mahmood hurts Lancashire in the later stages.

So far though, they are unbeaten and look capable of beating most sides.

Look at the Fixture List. Its rubbish. School holidays start quite late in July for Stockport Primaries, and then we are on holiday for a week. I went online to look at the options for taking my older son to some cricket at Old Trafford after August 8th. To say the options are sparse does not cut it. Just look at it!

OK so we have tickets for a couple of The Hundred games. But as far as I can see, no cricket is taking place at Old Trafford between the 13th August and 10th September. What is more, Lancashire first eleven do not even have fixtures after 13th August?

Am I missing something? What is going on? How on Earth am I meant to get my kids into Cricket with hardly any cricket to take them to in August? Something does not make sense.

So what can we make of the county season so far? We start with some extreme scores.

Big scores and little scores. We have seen 612/5, with 231 for James Vince (but off 220 balls). We have seen an even bigger 672/8; this time Ollie Pope was relatively slow in scoring 245 off 272 balls. Surrey again scored 560/7 including a Hashim Amla 215 with a more normal strike rate of 59. We even have some people talking about whether anyone will score 1000 runs before the end of May.

But then we have some truly dreadful scorecards. Middlesex 79. Essex 96 all out but they won that game because Durham flopped for 123. Essex crashed to defeat this week after being bowled out for 99. After another good score (470) Hampshire have been dismissed for 92 and 79. Kent were bowled out for 138 and 74 in a game. Warwickshire were bowled out 87. Sussex for 106.

Don’t get me wrong, some difficult conditions will have been involved as well as some great bowling. Apparently Kemar Roach was simply brilliant in Surrey’s destruction of Hampshire, but batting performances of 92 and 179 cause one to ask questions about the batting.

I wanted to compare that to England’s recent shambles in India. England’s scores ranged from 578 and 81. And you head back to England in the Trevor Bayliss era. 67 all out in the Ben Stokes Headingley test match. 85 all out against Ireland. I could go on with the low scores. But as well as 3 big scores in 2021 built entirely around Joe Root, you can point to some 600-ish scores in the Bayliss years.

England have tried to correct this tendency for high paced scoring – resulting in scores ranging from 67 to 600. They have looked to build. This has to be the way. I know it failed in India, but it is the right approach. With the types of scores we are seeing in the 2021 county season…it is little wonder we have seen an England side often unable to dig in and battle it out. Hopefully this change in approach from the top will effect the county game too, and we will not see so many big scores and little scores. Hampshire take note!

What I wanted to do with this column is show how difficult it is to follow County Cricket. Particularly the first class games. We are up to Round 5 and the season has included big scores and big collapses. And I have been working on strategies to keep up with the season.

Firstly, I need to get the fixtures in to my calendar or diary. For a while I have not been subscribing to The Cricketer, preferring instead to buy it ‘ad-hoc’ every so often. So I missed the wall chart edition. However, the ECB have partnered with Ecal to provide a service to synchronise the fixture list with your online calendar – Google in my case. You can find it here ECB.

I rather foolishly started by adding every single fixture into my diary. This is where madness lies. I mean, at least all the games start on a Thursday. For now. But we have a different number of games every week, with difficult to follow variations. For example, loads of fixtures start Thursday 20th May, but Hampshire v Leicestershire fixture starts on the Wednesday. Then the T20 kicks in in June with a couple of games every day and no Championship. I know that TV rules – and Sky has done a lot for the game – but I long for the old days of the Sunday League.

So, lesson learned, I now have (just) all the England International Fixtures (male and female) and all the Lancashire games in my diary.

This led onto my second lesson. I have now worked out that you can view short highlights of every first class fixture. But most days I cannot hope to watch it all and take it in (though some days will). So I am better just following Lancashire most of the time. That led me to Youtube – and I now subscribe to the Lancashire Youtube channel. One can only wonder if Jimmy Anderson could have got Marnus Labuschagne out in the 2019 Ashes, but he got him out against Glamorgan.

So, I will assiduously follow these sources, plus various newspapers and the The Cricketer website. And I have resumed my subscription (I went for the digital and magazine version because I like to get the magazine ‘proper’ but am often in places where the digital format is really useful so it seemed to make sense to pay an extra few pounds). I will let you know how it goes.

In 2021 I started with high ambitions. I was going to follow the domestic cricket season much more closely. On the 24th April, Lancashire have just completed the 11th day of the first class season. Two games are already completed. And the first game only started 16 days ago on the 8th. This is bonkers. And I have not even thought about how I will go about supporting Manchester Originals when The 100 starts.

What I am finding is that it is pretty difficult to follow first class cricket unless you have the luxury of time. Lots of it. When you have 2 children under the age of 5 and a full time job, you cannot spend 4 days watching a First Class game. The live streams and radio broadcasts are of limited use. The newspapers no longer have whole pages devoted to yesterday’s county fixtures (when I was a kid I loved to get hold of a Telegraph just so I could read all the reports). The Cricketer Magazine is great of course, but monthly.

Don’t get me wrong, you can do lots of things to simply find out the scores. There’s some really good journalists writing about the game. Tanya Aldred’s County roundup in The Guardian is a good tool. Elizabeth Ammon keeps us up to date on Twitter and in The Times. And I could mention many other journalists. Speaking of The Cricketer, they have lots of content freely available online relating to the county game.

The problem is not finding out that Joe Root has got 2 low scores against Sussex. The problem is that I have no idea if Root ‘looked a million dollars’ and was unlucky to get out, or if he is dreadfully out of form. My team, Lancashire, constructed a massive 525 down at Canterbury thanks in no small part to centuries from Wood and Lamb down at 8 and 9. Are they brilliant allrounders, or did Kent bowl dreadfully?

The problem is I just do not get chance to see the action, and it is not televised – at least, not much of it is. So what about highlights? Well, I can watch back many of the ‘key moments’ via the Lancs website (in the case of the current match, Kent are providing a live stream and the highlights are from that). But with no sound and no commentary, and you have to select each highlight. The ECB website carries highlights of 3 games.

As Elizabeth Ammon pointed out recently on Twitter, the answer is a Match of the Day type of program. Otherwise, how will anyone get into First Class cricket – and therefore how will Test Matches survive?