Brian Halford Article

A good article on the future of the County Championship by Brian Halford on his Blog. Well worth a look, with a handy breakdown of the scant opportunities afforded the CC fan to actually watch any weekend cricket by yours truly in the comments section.

A fuller breakdown of my "working out" follows:

warning! Stats and maths. In no way does the author imply this will constitute entertainment or enjoyment in any form.

If you break the calender for fixtures down into groups of matches starting within a day of each other, you get 21 distinct blocks of fixtures. Americans would no doubt call these "game days". Of these the first three blocks (2, 4 and 4 matches respectively) fall on weekends in Mid-April. Two more, blocks 9 & 10 (3 fixtures each) fall on weekends at the start of June. And finally block 14 is the last weekend in July (3 fixtures). Apart from 4 lone fixtures that are shunted a day later to finish on a Saturday, none of the final 7 blocks of fixtures, (the final 3rd of the season) fall on a weekend.

Allowing for no weather interruptions the breakdown by county is as follows:
Days of Home Championship Cricket falling on a Saturday or Sunday. (NB: 8 home fixtures = 32 days of cricket, maximum home days possible = 16)
Essex - 5
Warwickshire - 7
Durham - 3
Notts - 5
Yorkshire - 4
Somerset - 2
Kent - 6
Hampshire - 4
Lancashire - 2

It's a bad year to be a Somerset or Lancashire fan with a job.