Bob Willis Trophy Final



brandon said:
Nah, not for me. It’s served its purpose this year but we don’t need any further bastardisation of our county game.
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Totally agree - mind you the way things are going at the moment we'll be lucky if we've got that competition next season never mind anything resembling the normal CC format.
 
I'd given up hope of Essex winning any red ball competition again, after the uninterrupted success of the 80's, especially when David East was running the show behind the scenes in Chelmsford. Five years ago, the club was s mess, with East having finally bowed to members pressure and gone.

It just goes to show what can be done when everyone pulls together. A promotion, two county titles and now the Bob Willis Trophy. Just by having the right people in the right places wanting the same thing. If Essex can do it, Durham most definitely can.
 
To me it just reinforced the curiosity of why so many domestic competitions play 4 days instead of 5. I'm not really up with the history of it all, apparently 1988 it swapped from 3 days to mostly 3 days with some 4 day games, then all 4-dayers in 1993.

Yes the south group got almost all results, but what good is it having no scores above 200 and Darren Stevens being unplayable? The final was a far better emulation of Test cricket. You had a good pitch, quality players getting hundreds and bowlers having to work for their wickets. If it had been 4 days it would have been a nonevent. You always hear about wanting more express pace & spinners in the game, well 5 days with fewer overs per day does that. Other than obviously having to play about 15% fewer games with 5 day matches, I see a lot of positives and very few negatives.
 
scaly_piscine said:
To me it just reinforced the curiosity of why so many domestic competitions play 4 days instead of 5. I'm not really up with the history of it all, apparently 1988 it swapped from 3 days to mostly 3 days with some 4 day games, then all 4-dayers in 1993.

Yes the south group got almost all results, but what good is it having no scores above 200 and Darren Stevens being unplayable? The final was a far better emulation of Test cricket. You had a good pitch, quality players getting hundreds and bowlers having to work for their wickets. If it had been 4 days it would have been a nonevent. You always hear about wanting more express pace & spinners in the game, well 5 days with fewer overs per day does that. Other than obviously having to play about 15% fewer games with 5 day matches, I see a lot of positives and very few negatives.
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If you get flat pitches the debate soon flips to batsmen not being properly challenged. There’s no perfect solution.

To me 5 days would further compress the season and also result in more wasted days in the calendar where a 5th day goes unutilised. Hence losing 15% of fixtures, or 2 out of the existing 14. It’s a no from me.
 
NorthCountryBoy said:
If you get flat pitches the debate soon flips to batsmen not being properly challenged. There’s no perfect solution.

To me 5 days would further compress the season and also result in more wasted days in the calendar where a 5th day goes unutilised. Hence losing 15% of fixtures, or 2 out of the existing 14. It’s a no from me.
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Flat pitches are what you get in Test cricket. You've still got English overhead conditions and a Dukes ball to work with and more wear on the pitch so it's never going to be that flat for long - when you get higher scores the fast outfields and ball staying harder for longer are usually a factor as well. Complete borefests are rare. Draws tend to be because of time lost through prolonged rain, bad light etc.

If you want the scene to continue to be dominated by medium pace then sure, keep it as is. But that's not going to prepare players well for Test cricket. In our 4-day stuff someone like Darren Stevens is a much more effective player than Ben Stokes.
 

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