Cricket-Match-Special ... A forum for discussion

The County Championship is due to start this Sunday.

Poll runs for seven days.

Yorkshire!

Given Yorkshire will be shipping at least half their side to England, including, crucially, Bairstow, I've gone for Warks. Their bowling is great, and Woakes should be available. Plus Trott and Bell will bat (I'm sure someone posted Trott had retired from CC, but he's still playing).

Winning 3 in a row is ridiculously difficult.. even Durham couldn't do it when they were the best team by miles in county cricket. If Yorks can do it, I'll doff my cap to them, because it will be a remarkable achievement, rarely done.

Warks, on the other hand have been there or thereabouts for a while now and assuming Bell plays the whole season for them, he will make the difference imo

Very few of the Warwicksire first team players are under 30 and some are veterans. They don't have a great list of reserves and few young potential stars. Wright, Rankin and Barker seem injury prone and rarely play a full season. This year may well be their last hurrah with this squad.

Ooooh this is a tough one, mostly because the standard of Division 1 looks like it will increase.

Squad wise I think Yorkshire will be in a stronger position than ever before, aided by how the domestic fixtures are scheduled which will allow the England players to feature more often. Although 10 rounds of County Championship clash with England matches, it's split evenly between five Tests and five LOIs. Bairstow could well be available for as many as 11 County Championship matches providing he's not involved in England LOIs, and vice versa with Rashid. Even if Adam Lyth or Gary Ballance get England recalls, worse case scenario is missing 5 County Championship matches.

Warwickshire, Middlesex and Notts are sure to pose dangerous threats to Yorkshire's title defence but something tells me this Yorkshire squad has all time greats written all over it.

I fancy surry to be a threat this year. Burns, Davies Sangacara, Ansari and the Curran brothers is a strong base for any team.

Yorkshire for me.

Westwood
Chopra
Bell
Trott
Hain
Ambrose
Woakes
Clarke
Patel
Barker
Rankin

Dalby
Wright

Looks strong.

hopeforthebest wrote:I fancy surry to be a threat this year. Burns, Davies Sangacara, Ansari and the Curran brothers is a strong base for any team.

I see Footitt is also with Surrey so even stronger than I thought.

Two horse race, neck and neck.

No one went for Middlesex.

In fact no one went for anyone except Yorkshire (close) and Warwickshire (not so close)

Arthur Crabtree wrote: Their bowling is great, and Woakes should be available. Plus Trott and Bell will bat (I'm sure someone posted Trott had retired from CC, but he's still playing).

Idiot!

just goes to show how little we know

or at least, how little I know

There's quite a narrow gap between triumph and ignominy in CC1 though. Yorkshire won five and lost three and were 30m from the title. Warks won three and lost four and weren't much further from relegation.