County cricket needs Bazball

It’s freezing cold and everywhere is flooded, so it must be the start of the county cricket season. Surrey, last year’s champions, head for Old Trafford on Friday, in what should be a three-sweater day, aiming to make it three titles in a row. And who would bet against them? It’s a superb tournament, the county championship, much more than just an opportunity for elderly gentlemen to spread their wings with a sandwich lunch. But it could certainly do with some reforms. This goes against a lot of current thinking, but why not revert to three-day matches with a points system heavily weighted against draws? This would provide considerably more excitement, with no excuse for spending ages building a big first innings, as well as providing more elbow room for other competitions.

Nor would it be detrimental to grooming players for Test cricket. One of the main problems for the championship is the negativity that surrounds it. It has become fashionable to run it down and administrators and cricket’s grandees need to be more positive about what is a historic competition. The 2024 Playfair Cricket Annual is out this week and will almost certainly go into the bestseller lists. On the cover is a photo of Harry Brook playing an elegant cover drive. You can almost smell the mown grass and feel the excitement rising.

Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes are dead right in trying to play aggressive cricket and the counties should start doing the same. The debate about ‘Bazball’ is absurd: for professional sport to survive it has to be entertaining, and aggressive cricket is undoubtedly far more entertaining than defensive cricket. The great teams of the past – the Windies in the 1970s and 1980s and Aussie teams under Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting – provided outstanding entertainment because of their aggression.