Snow is on the ground, temperatures are sub-zero, and the only cricket available is being played in the middle of the night. Must be Christmastime, right? Only the 2023 County Championship gets underway in a little over three weeks’ time…
In the lead-up, I’ll be looking at some of the data from last season and previewing each side for 2023. While I will make some predictions as to finishing places, these are deeply unscientific and predicated on the fact that I have a full-time job, so I can’t exactly take time out to watch fourteen four day matches per side, per season. Instead, I’ve tried to identify areas of strength and weakness for each team.
Derbyshire (5th)
Ahh, Mickey Arthur’s Derbyshire. Part of a middle category in Division Two last year, as one of the six teams who lost fewer than four games, but failed to put together the victories necessary to seal promotion, drawing eight times in fourteen attempts. They were also dealt a blow in the loss of Shan Masood, who topped the averages with 1074 runs at 82, to Division Two new boys Yorkshire. However, they do still have the ultra-consistent Wayne Madsen, who reeled off ten fifties and three hundreds in 2022, and Anuj Dal, who made 957 runs at 73. Batting is Derbyshire’s real strength, crossing 300 twelve times in fourteen games, with an astonishing five totals greater than 500.
With such batting numbers, it may come as little surprise that they drew so many times in 2022. Notably, they failed to put Sussex away after enforcing the follow on, as Tom Haines and Cheteshwar Pujara both posted double hundreds in a score of 531-3 after being bundled out for just 174 in their first innings.1 They also really struggled against eventual champions Nottinghamshire, salvaging a draw after being made to follow-on, and losing the return fixture by 10 wickets. They did, however, beat the other promoted team (Middlesex), at home, and ran out of time to force a result in the away fixture (finishing 255-5 with a further 101 required) in their season opener at Lord’s in April.
Shan Masood and Wayne Madsen were two of the top five run-scorers in Division Two last year2
Derbyshire have signed Matt Lamb from Warwickshire (487 runs at 48.7 in Division One last year) to replace Shan Masood, and will expect their batsmen to continue scoring heavily in 2023. Their sesason will then hinge on how effective their bowling is - last season’s top wicket-taker, Sam Conners, took his 50 wickets at 35 runs apiece, going for nearly four runs per over in the process; Alex Thompson’s 22 wickets cost more than 50 runs each; and even Dal, who took 34 wickets, managed five in an innings only once. Derbyshire’s wickets were shared around their bowlers, but at great expense in 2022.
Derbyshire’s Bowling in 2022
They will want their front-liners to do more of the heavy lifting to limit their runs conceded in 2023 - if they can do this, they’ll be in the hunt at the sharp end of the season.
Prediction: 3rd
Durham (6th)
Durham closed out 2022 with an identical record to Derbyshire (although they were a full eight points below them in the table (four batting bonus points and four bowling bonus points).
Durham’s batsmen fall into one of two stratas, demonstrated by the below graph: an upper group on weight of runs (Borthwick, Dickson, Bedingham, Jones and Lees) and a lower group with averages between 26 and 43, but fewer than 400 runs in the season. Ben Stokes is a bit of an outlier as the England Test captain - his 284 runs came at nearly 57, but he only played five innings and it’ll probably be a similar story this year, as the IPL and Ashes will dominate his focus. He has promised to be back from the IPL to prepare for the Test against Ireland, which will hopefully entail playing some Championship cricket, but just how much remains to be seen. Durham will benefit from a full season of Alex Lees (651 runs at 59) now that he seems to have been firmly discarded by England.
Durham’s Batting in 2022
There has been some churn at Durham over the winter, as Dickson, their second-leading run-scorer in 2022, and Chris Rushworth, who claimed 34 wickets at 27.35, left the club to relocate further south. Rushworth in particular enjoyed a long and successful career in the Northeast, and the success of their replacements will tell a lot in the final reckoning for Durham. They have signed a pair of Dutch internationals in Bas de Leede and Brandon Glover, who have a grand total of eleven first-class games between them. Glover was one of the stars of the show at the Netherlands’ victory over South Africa during the T20 World Cup, claiming three wickets. With the team also likely to be without Mark Wood and Matt Potts due to England commitments, they will hope that de Leede and Glover can prove able replacements.
Durham’s Bowling in 2022
I think this will be a challenging season for Durham, shorn of two mainstays and with Potts and Wood likely to be missing for much of the year. Brydon Carse is a great talent but shines more in the white-ball game - I think it’ll be a bottom-half finish for Durham this year.
Glamorgan (3rd)
The resident Welsh county posted an extremely solid 2022 season, falling short of promotion by just nine points, with twin defeats to the side that pipped them, Middlesex, proving crucial in the final reckoning. With last year’s nemisis out of the reckoning, then, what does 2023 have in store?
They do have Australian batsman Marnus Labuschagne tied down until 2024, though he will expect to miss the middle of the summer for the Ashes (not a problem any of Glamorgan’s England-qualified players will have). They’ll also have a Root playing for them - though it’s Billy, not his more illustrious brother Joe. Sam Northeast was the third highest run-scorer in the division last year, and was joined in making more than 800 runs by David Lloyd and Chris Cooke.
Batsmen making more than 800 runs - Division Two 2022
They have, however, lost top wicket-taker Michael Hogan to Kent for 2023. Hogan took 45 wickets at less than 30 runs apiece last season for the Welsh club. But Glamorgan do have significant strength in depth - Michael Neser took 37 wickets at a shade over 25 in 2022, and was the top wicket-taker in this year’s Sheffield Shield, with forty. He will be ably supported, again, by Salter, Harris and van der Gugten.
Glamorgan’s Bowling in 2022
With a settled team, strong overseas player and excellent showing in 2022 to build on, I think this could well be a big season for Glamorgan. Yes, Hogan’s wickets will be a big miss, but it’s hardly like he was the sole crusader in the Glamorgan attack. Barring injury to one of their big players, I fully expect Glamorgan to be up there again this year, especially after such a close call last time out.
Prediction: 2nd [P]
Gloucestershire [R]
Along with Northamptonshire and Somerset, Gloucestershire are one of just three clubs never to win the County Championship. They ended a fifteen-year stay in Division Two with promotion in 2019, but were relegated at the first opportunity in 2022, finishing bottom of the table, with only two wins. They will need to start faster in 2023 - last season they failed to register a win until September, by which time it was too late to salvage their season.
Much will hinge on Australian import Marcus Harris, who scored three hundreds for them in 2022, averaging 42 in the process. He is unlikely to be recalled by Australia for the Ashes, having last played Test cricket in January 2022, and if he can repeat his exploits of last season, Gloucestershire will be in a strong position for the new season. Harris will be joined by the vastly experienced Chris Dent, who has committed to the county until 2026 and has over 10,000 first-class runs, and Miles Hammond, who averaged 33 in 2022, outperforming his career average by some five runs - if he can continue to improve this year, Gloucs will have an impressive triumvirate to hold up their batting.
It is their bowling that let them down in 2022, conceding scores in excess of 300 ten times last season, with three of those totals exceeding 500. The 23 year old seamer Tom Price led the line for them, whose 32 Division One wickets cost just 20 runs apiece, while Zafar Gohar claimed 47 at a shade over 28. However, no other bowler managed a single five-wicket haul in the season, and of their remaining bowlers only Mohammed Amir (6 wickets in three innings) posted an average under 20. They have picked up Marchant de Lange, who has two Test caps and 9 wickets for South Africa, and a further 339 first-class scalps, but who found opportunities hard to come by at Somerset last season, with five wickets in three games. Somerset will want de Lange to add some penetration to their attack, and to exercise some more control over the scoring rate. They conceded runs at a touch under 3.2 per over in 2022 - not buffet bowling, by any rate, but no bowler who played more than two matches conceded their runs slower than 2.86 per over.
The bowling remains the big question-mark for Gloucestershire, as Harris, Dent, Bracey and Hammond should be a match for most Division Two attacks. For me, they don’t quite have enough to make it back up this season, but they’ll certainly find themselves in the fight.
Prediction: 4th
That’s all we have time for today - I’ll tackle the rest of Division Two next week, and I’m aiming to get a preview written for the ten-team Division One before the start of the season. I’m moving house, though, so this may take a back seat at some point!
You can find out why enforcing the follow-on is generally a bad idea (at least in Test cricket) here:
All data is sourced from Cricinfo, then cleaned, compiled and visualised by me