Cricket's County Championship - a history
The 119th season of English cricket's County Championship starts today. It's designed not only to crown the champion first-class county but to breed and sustain a pool of talent for England's test team - which could certainly do with an influx lately. By this very nature it's not an entertainment product to be compared with the T20 Blast, IPL or Big Bash, as evidenced by the sparsely populated arenas and total absence of television coverage. However, countless devotees will follow the scores online throughout the season and contribute to forums like the Guardian's county cricket live blog.
Nonetheless, those fearing the demise of test cricket bemoan the lack of media coverage afforded to the first-class county game. Therefore, I'm doing my bit to redress the balance - as much as an occasional blog read mostly by family can redress anything - by presenting a statistical summary of the story so far. I've divided the history of the championship into five eras, using mostly logical boundaries, and - you guessed it - produced a bunch of colourful spreadsheets. Here's the first:
Ranked by average finishing position, it shows at what point most of the counties joined the nascent championship, and how they settled in. Surrey reigned for three seasons before Yorkshire seized power - across 17 years, one fourth place was their worst finish. Surrey remained strong as the two counties shared 16 of 25 titles but Lancashire were a model of consistency, only departing the top half as war approached. Kent started falteringly but claimed four titles towards the end of the era.
Of the nine earliest counties, it was western neighbours Gloucestershire and Somerset who failed to turn the headstart to their advantage, with the latter the most disappointing. Nearby, latecomers Worcestershire and, especially, Northamptonshire quickly rose towards mid-table, each claiming an impressive early second place. Further east, another neighbouring pair, Leicestershire and Derbyshire, adopted a habit of underachievement which they would struggle to kick. On we go:
Between the wars, Yorkshire were even more dominant than before, with 12 of 21 titles and an average finish of second place, the best in any era. Lancashire finally converted their consistency to a commensurate quantity of silverware, with Middlesex instead maintaining the role of habitual bridesmaids, whereas Surrey gradually tailed off and won nothing at all. Derbyshire won their only title, during a heady '30s run of four top three finishes, having twice finished last a decade earlier.
Worcestershire were so weak after the war that they took a year off, then embarked on a bid to compile the worst decade of results in cricket history, before Northamptonshire promptly outdid them with seven wooden spoons in the 1930s. Leicestershire and Somerset continued to struggle, while Warwickshire had their worst era with a number of low finishes. Gloucestershire claimed their first two of a record six runners-up spots for a team with no championships wins to this day.
Meanwhile, the league ceased to be an exclusively national one with the admission of Glamorgan. For nearly a century now, Glamorgan County Cricket Club has brought very occasional joy to its supporters while defending its position as a commercially run franchise by opposing the concept of a Welsh national cricket team. Culminating in the lucrative hosting of English test cricket in Cardiff, this selfish attitude denies a proud sporting nation its right to compete internationally, and is an unmitigated disgrace. There will be no further mention of them then, as we continue:
1975 seems an appropriate, if somewhat arbitrary end to this middle era: it's about then that limited overs cricket became a big deal, and overseas players began to make their mark on the domestic game; also, any later and this table would be too small to read, but that's where the colours come in handy anyway. Yorkshire and Surrey continue to dominate with nine titles apiece, but they each share one, with Middlesex and Lancashire respectively in the consecutive tied seasons of 1949 and 1950. Surrey then win an unprecedented - and probably never to be beaten - seven titles in a row.
Worcestershire finally hit their straps, winning their first two titles back-to-back in the mid-'60s, then a third 10 years later. Northamptonshire also have their best spell, with eight top-four finishes after a couple of early wooden spoons. Hampshire win their only two titles in '61 and '73, but these are preceded and separated by several poor years, so the south coast side's average remains average.
There's a reversal of fortunes in the east midlands, as Nottinghamshire, usually among the chasing pack and with two titles previously, have a shocker over this period. Meanwhile, Leicestershire, although barely better than their neighbours overall, finally find some form in the early '70s and claim their maiden title as the era ends. It was to be a taste of things to come, as we see here:
The stark difference in this table can be summarised by Essex and Leicestershire leaping into the top four, with northern powerhouses Yorkshire and Lancashire astonishingly falling just as far the other way. Yorkshire's results did improve markedly when they finally joined the other counties in allowing foreign players in the early '90s, but still, the two Roses' struggles, alongside Essex's golden decade from 1983-1992, followed by Leicestershire's golden half of one in the '90s, are a massive outlier.
Middlesex and Surrey at least tried to maintain the status quo, although at Lord's it was feast or famine with seven titles and seven bad years, whereas Surrey were more consistently good but didn't win much. Two titles each for rivals Warwickshire and Worcestershire, Kent (who forced Middlesex to share again in 1977) and a resurgent Nottinghamshire were par for the course, while Somerset had their best era yet, despite still never having breached the top two.
In 1992 Durham became the first new English first-class county for 87 years, instantly improving the geographical balance of the national league, but they languished for six seasons before improving dramatically over the next two, just in time to claim a place in the inaugural Divison One...
This one looks different, doesn't it? The introduction of two divisions, with promotion (yellow above) and relegation (blue), was designed to concentrate talent among fewer teams in any one season, increasing the quality of competition in the top flight and therefore providing better prepared players to the national team. Gradually, this separation of quality has discernibly transpired.
Until 2005, the three-up-and-down system gave every team a chance to earn promotion, but was chaotic, with one-third of teams moving divisions each year. Two out of nine thereafter seemed more sensible, but the recent move to eight teams in Division 1 and 10 in Division 2, though understandable, leaves some adrift at the bottom, while the top flight is once again precarious.
There are three new columns above. The first divides England into six regions, of which two (green) have generally strong teams, three (yellow) experience more mixed returns, while the east midlands (red) has a preponderance of failing first-class counties. Next, the distinction is made between six counties who have pretty much always hosted test cricket, three who have latterly been induced to join their ranks, and the remainder who have never hosted tests and probably never will.
Finally, the 'R/P' column shows promotions plus relegations for each county, and here conclusions can start to be drawn - or can they? There's a mixture of stability and volatility throughout the table, but it seems to be how a team responds to volatility that matters: Lancashire and Nottinghamshire have each been relegated three times, but have always bounced straight back, whereas, despite five promotions, Worcestershire have only once earned a second season in Division 1.
Sussex had their golden age, finally winning their first title, then two more within five years. Durham did the same, having not waited quite so long, only to be shafted by the ECB in 2016 - see the black block where the colours don't match the numbers. Yorkshire returned to form, including recent back-to-back wins. All three of these triple champions spent multiple - and consecutive - years in Division 2, but made the best of their top flight opportunities through investment and recruitment.
On the other hand, Lancashire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and Somerset have shown the consistency to maintain top flight status for many years at a time - which is how to achieve a high average-position ranking on my list - but without amassing such concentrated silverware hauls. Somerset at least achieved second place at last - and then, agonisingly, did it three more times.
While no team has completely escaped relegation, Leicestershire, having started in Division 1, have sadly seen promotion elude them altogether since they fell in 2003. Two east midlands neighbours haven't fared much better, as the best of their talent heads north to Trent Bridge or beyond. Another testless county, Gloucestershire, only briefly crashed the party with fifth place in 2004.
All-in-all there are 11 counties who might argue that they are, or should be, top flight regulars - clearly an equation that can't be solved. Then come the Worcestershire Yo-Yos, who have been relegated or promoted in 11 of the last 15 years. Apart from the stragglers mentioned above, that just leaves Essex, who had never even survived a season in Division 1 until last year, when they followed promotion by winning the whole thing. Maybe it's the dawn of yet another era...
*Middlesex have 11 outright wins and two shared titles
With this final summary, the bigger picture becomes clear. The London test match counties have always been consistently high achievers. Their northern counterparts have similarly impressive records, with Yorkshire particularly dominant before 1975, but both sank dramatically, if temporarily, in the early modern era. The two midlands test match counties, Warwickshire in our second city and Nottinghamshire to the east, are not far behind despite their own separate periods of difficulty.
Historically, Kent have been the strongest of London's four satellite counties, and were the only non-test side to challenge consistently before the modern era. Recently though they have succumbed to the designs of the two-division system, while Sussex, Essex and Durham have instead bucked the trend of test-ground dominance. Somerset are largely of the same ilk but have won nothing.
Hampshire and Gloucestershire are the perennially average counties, the former especially so, although at least they have a couple of titles to show for it, whereas the west's winless woe has continued as Gloucestershire become Division 2 stalwarts. Up the road in Worcestershire though, there has at least been a healthy five championships, preceded by some truly awful stuff between the wars, and followed lately by the Sisyphean nightmare of promotion, relegation, repeat...
All this brings us back to the sorry state of east midlands cricket outside Nottingham. Leicestershire have three titles, so to rank as low as they do shows just how awful they have been the rest of the time; Derbyshire have just the 1936 title to show for their efforts. Potless Northamptonshire have at least avoided the wooden spoon since 1978, while their two neighbours to the north have quite abjectly claimed 11 of the last 17. With no test match revenue, how can they ever improve?
I'm not a fan of the movement towards city-based franchises, although since it will intially involve T20 cricket I'm unlikely to notice much. In fact, I think it's a little unfair that the county championship is ring-fenced, when a third division would allow the whole country to join in. However, it's easy to see from the east midlands example how the balance of power lies with counties that host test matches, and a Nottingham city team would be the nearest option for fans of its three neighbours.
Similarly, Gloucestershire and Somerset could meet in Bristol and form a pretty handy alliance, while combinations of Kent and Essex, or Hampshire and Sussex, would certainly challenge the traditional big four. It wouldn't be fair on the existing fans of these teams though, and I know this, because I'd rather suffer relegation every second year for eternity than see a Birmingham franchise get their hands on my beloved Worcestershire... Glamorgan can get lost though: Cymru am byth!