Pete Barrow: Faith Healing

Sep 4 2009 by Peter Barrow, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

THANKS to Ian Blackwell for restoring some faith in the County Championship.

The spinner and his Durham side are heading towards retaining the title – and they are doing it in some style.

While the modern game seems to be becoming increasingly obsessed with Test matches (rightly) and Twenty20 thrashes (wrongly), to read comments from a county player extolling the virtues of the bread-and-butter game is heart-warming.

Aside from his brief flirtations with the England side, Blackwell is a fairly typical county artisan but greeted Durham’s latest push towards a second consecutive title by saying: “Even if I never play for England again, I can still try to win things and championships are the best thing in cricket. To retain the title is one thing, but to get through the season unbeaten is a huge target for us.”

Such pride in his side’s achievement is worthy of great praise, and this with a northern county who look odds on to take the crown both by winning games and defying the weather.

Which leads me to ask this question. What has happened to the north’s two giants of the game?

While Lancashire ‘enjoy’ mid-table mediocrity, Yorkshire face the final three matches of the season with their top flight status still in the balance.

The current away game to second placed Nottinghamshire does not promise too much for the Tykes, but they then have some hope away to fellow strugglers Sussex before a home finish at Headingley against another relegation-haunted side in Hampshire.

Woe betide Yorkshire if they reach that last game in need of a win – Leeds in late September does not normally equate to a result.

In fact the Red Rose boys cannot rest on their laurels as they go into the same decisive spell with two home games against Sussex and Warwickshire unlikely to produce positive results, leaving a trip to third in the table Somerset as ironically the best bet for a substantial points return.

However, my biggest anxiety this season is not the fate of two counties – who to my way of thinking should be permanent fixtures in the top flight – but the fact that so few fans seem in the slightest bit anxious about this state of affairs.

Nailing my colours to the mast, I was born the other side of the hills and have always supported the Red Rose, but the majority of my working life has been on this side of the Pennines.

In that quarter century or so, the most boring summers were while I was working in Lancashire as I was denied the joy of Tyke-baiting.

Obviously it cuts both ways and I have always been prepared to take the flak when the White Rose has had the upper hand (though I’m struggling to remember that happening), but this summer has been so quiet as to suggest apathy in both camps as fans seem resigned to their county’s fate.

While table-topping Ian Blackwell and his Durham pals believe there is life in the old dog yet, it would seem that two of the most passionate sets of followers have fallen out of love with the County Championship.

Hampered by midweek fixture programmes, which mean few fans can attend matches, and with a sprawling format, the Championship in its current state is not that attractive and a serious makeover may be the only way ahead.

Just a suggestion, but eight four-day games (one against each county in your regional division) with weekend play in these fixtures, which then produces a play-off between the top two in each section with the winners to play a five-day final to decide who are the champions seems more of a potential crowd-puller to me.