The Start of the County Season

The start of the county season is a time for every cricket fan to rejoice and look ahead to a feast of county and international cricket over the next few months, well at least that's what we were thinking of when the weather was nice in the early part of April then came the constant downpours of the last few weeks and the cricket that we've actually had has been a very small amount.

The County Championship is on it's third game of the season so far but there is not a team out there at the moment that has not lost some time to the weather. I come from Essex and as such am a huge fan and follow them whenever I can, so with our second game being against Yorkshire who are also chasing promotion back into the top division we thought that it would give a good indication of the way things would go and see if we were correct in thinking that the top 2 places would be between those two teams. A lot of rain later and we still don't have a clue.

In the top division it seems as if it might be a race between Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire who lead the way after the early few games although there are a lot of other teams that might have a say in that such as Durham, Somerset or last years winners Lancashire. Still with at least 12 games to until the end of the County Championship season there is plenty of time for another team to make it up there or one of the before mentioned teams breaking away from the rest.

Moving across to the international scene and we are welcoming the West Indies here very soon and the first test match will begin on the 17th May. Growing up I heard a lot about the great West Indian sides of the past with people like Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner but when you compare that to the current day side you see how far backwards they have gone. Chanderpaul is a wonderful player but apart from that I just cannot see anyone else troubling our bowling attack and I think we will win comfortably in all forms.

Still as long as the weather controls itself and we get a bit more like the sunshine we hoped that we would have then we could be in for a cracking few months both domestically and internationally.