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The Challenge
With the introduction of the 100 there has emerged a new challenge for English counties. Not in the actual playing of the tournament but rather in coping with the effect it has on their squads and the one day Challenge Trophy.
Over the years it has been a reasonably straight forward task to build a squad that can compete across all three competitions. Depending on the squad you kick off with you could concentrate on either first class or limited over matches and build a squad around your favoured format. A good first class team, for example, would hold perhaps eight out of your first choice one day and six or seven of your T20 teams. A few limited over specialists who reinforce the one day and T20 teams could be added while a couple of international signings would boost your T20 team where it was weakest. This would be much the same if you concentrated on any of the formats.
From this season there is, for some reason, the 100. While a good first class team can still provide six or seven of your T20 players it will now probably provide no more than one, maybe two of your one day players because almost all players showing any serious aptitude in either of the limited overs formats gets hoovered up by the 100. If you concentrate on your T20 team then you will find yourself in the same boat, if not worse off.. It is not uncommon to find that you enter the Challenge Trophy with only just enough players to put out a OD team and are forced to field players who are is such poor form that you would never usually pick them or have all the LO aptitude of a camel.
The outcome is a swelling of squad sizes, putting pressure on the budget, or encouraging a lack of interest in the OD competition.
So the challenge is going to be taking the county with the lowest basic income and to see if it can be built into a side that can sustainably compete in all three formats.
For this challenge step forward Derbyshire.
With a basic income of 696,500 Derbyshire lags 37,000 behind the county with the next lowest basic income, Kent, and a whopping 305,500 less than Surrey who have a ridiculous 1,002,000 to play with. To put that into perspective the difference between coming last in the Championship and in each of the pools for for the limited overs tournaments as opposed to winning all three is 260,000 in prize money so even if we finished first in all tournaments and Surrey last we would still be 45,500 short of their spending power.
The idea is not to see how long it takes to win a tournament or if I can take Derbyshire to treble immortality but if it is viable for a team with such a small basic income to be a competitive force in all three tournaments for a decent period of time.
So what would you define as success?
Personally I will be looking to be pushing for the top spot in the Championship and to finish no lower than third. So that means not battling with other mid-table sides to get to third but coming third because sightly better or luckier sides squeeze ahead.
I would usually consider a limited-over semi final as a minimum for a true title-contending team. You can get to the quarters by the skin of your teeth but by the semi finals you usually have the four best teams. At this stage getting nudged out by a good performance on the other team is fine – it happens – but batting collapses or a good bowler conceding 1-60 in three overs is not and should be considered a failure rather than bad luck. I want to be winning at least one of the LO tournaments every year.
Obviously winning every match in all formats every year is the goal but when is it not?
The next thing to determine is how long is a sustained period at the top of the domestic completions? I will probably go for five seasons after winning the Championship and either the OD or T20 cup in the same year while reaching the semi final in the other limited overs competition.
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