Media day at Lord’s and the nursery pavilion is abuzz as players in a variety of kits are filmed with a variety of props for a variety of broadcasters. After a five-year absence Middlesex are back in the top flight, though as this scene plays out that fact is probably more likely to have affected the number of journalists present than the players themselves.
There is a buzz before the start of any season, and to ask a professional cricketer if they are more motivated by the prospect of a top-flight campaign than they might have been in Division Two is less an inquiry than an insult. That doesn’t stop the Spin from having a go.
“There’s that extra level of excitement knowing you’re not playing to be the 11th best team in the country,” Mark Stoneman says. “You don’t want to be the 11th best team in the country, you want to be the best team in the country. So I’m very excited to see where we are when we pit ourselves against the best.”
Few are predicting a struggle. Middlesex appear to have a handy combination of youth and experienceand batting and seam-bowling strength – though the loss of the spinner Keshav Maharaj, who ruptured an achilles while celebrating a wicket when playing for South Africa last month, will be keenly felt. In Stoneman and John Simpson they had two of the nine players who reached 1,000 runs in Division Two last year and in Toby Roland-Jones the division’s most productive bowler, with 67 wickets at an average of 18.80. Tom Helm’s form in all formats earned him a place in England’s white-ball squad.
“I said at the start of last season that I felt we had a squad good enough to not be in Division Two,” says the seamer Tim Murtagh, 22 years after his County Championship debut and with 985 wickets to his name for the club, who is going into the season in a new player-coach role. “It felt like our time and it felt like the guys had played enough cricket and experienced enough to get ourselves out of that division, which we did.
“I’m really optimistic and excited about what we can do. You don’t want to make big statements about coming straight up and winning it, but that has happened before. If we play well and things go our way then who knows? It’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen, but we’ll give anyone a match.”
Middlesex’s elevated status is not the only significant change to English first-class cricket. Last summer, there was much talk about Andrew Strauss’s high-performance review, prompted by the England Test side’s performances over the previous 12 months. The national side is provoking discussions of a very different nature and given the proposals made by Strauss included reducing the number of County Championship matches and the chance of teams being promoted, there is unsurprising relief among these just-promoted players that some of those outcomes may have been seen off.
“We need to champion the English domestic game a bit more and appreciate what we do have,” says Stoneman, whose average of 48.8 opening last year was his best since 2017. “It helps create some very successful cricketers.
“It’s always being knocked as a reaction to what’s happening on the international scene, so England lose the Ashes away – far from the first time – and all of a sudden the county game gets called into question. Then on the back of that we have the revolution with Stokesy and Brendon McCullum and then all the praise goes somewhere else.
Division One
Hampshire v Nottinghamshire (Southampton)
Kent v Northampstonshire (Canterbury)
Lancashire v Surrey (Old Trafford)
Middlesex v Essex (Lord's)
Somerset v Warwickshire (Taunton)
Division Two
Derbyshire v Worcestershire (Derby)
Glamorgan v Gloucestershire (Cardiff)
Sussex v Durham (Hove)
Yorkshire v Leicestershire (Headingley)
“Removing relegation and stuff like that is nonsense. In a promotion race, when one-point swings over a couple of wickets or a partnership can be so important,that’s a big learning curve for a young player.
“If you’re a young guy coming through, batting with a senior player and you’re working to get 400 or to save a game for a draw – and the draw has been demonised a lot recently – that’s really important for a young player’s development.”
Those demonised draws will be rewarded with five points this year, down from last year’s eight, one of a few minor tweaks intended to encourage attacking cricket – though the example being set by England’s Test side may have done that all by itself.
“Whether that comes off or not for everyone, and whether it’s as easy to do on some of the wickets in county cricket compared to Test cricket, I certainly think there are going to be some players – maybe not sides – who use it as a tactic,” says Murtagh. “Perhaps guys who might have thought they’re miles away from playing Test cricket, and I’m thinking especially of good white-ball players, it’ll give them a real incentive to know they’re not that far away. If we have a dry summer like we did last year that might encourage it a bit more.
“It’s something as a bowling unit especially we need to be aware of – there’ll be more blokes running down the wicket at us and trying to smash it over the top than perhaps there have been in years gone by. We just need to be ready for that.”
Their season starts with the visit of Essex on Thursday. It’s time for Middlesex to show how ready they are.
This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
