Durham the major victims of soggy April

By Andrew Hignell

It was something more akin to the onset of the annual monsoon in southern India as weather forecasters showed satellite images of a deep depression working its way across much of England and Wales in the early hours of Sunday, April 29.

Later that day, eight County Championship matches, plus an MCC Universities match at Derby, were due to be completed, but the torrential rain associated with the depression, which brought more than fifty flood warnings in many parts of England, saw no play possible in any of these games.

Indeed, as far as the contests at The Kia Oval and Bristol were concerned, this was the fourth successive day when no play had been possible. The matches between Surrey and Durham, plus Gloucestershire and Glamorgan, were abandoned without a single ball being bowled. As one wag at the Nevil Road ground observed, as he looked out across the saturated outfield, it was rather ironic that the squads for the Division Two encounter had included a Waters, a Reed and a Wade!

A year ago the country experienced its warmest April for more than 350 years as crowds at county games basked in spring sunshine, with south-east England having less than 10 per cent of the average rainfall for the month.

It has been a completely different story this year, with April 2012 going down in the record books as one of the coldest and wettest on record. Rather than the typical pattern of April showers, the weather maps for the closing week of the month showed one depression after another bringing heavy downpours, thunderstorms and gusty winds, leaving county cricketers to kick their heels as play was abandoned across the land.

The upshot for county cricket, however, is that many sides have lost over a third of playing time this season. As the table below shows, Durham have been the worst affected losing, by the end of April, a fraction over half of their possible playing time.

Unlike other sports, there is no allowance to make up for this lost time, so when the Championship resumes after its mid-summer break for the Twenty20 competition, in June and July, all concerned will be hoping that August and September will be dry months as the traditional long slog of the four-day competition turns into something of a short sprint as counties jostle for promotion in Division Two, and battle to avoid relegation in Division One.



Division One - % of playing time lost
        
Durham                     51
Lancashire               26
Middlesex                 25
Nottinghamshire        23
Somerset                  33
Surrey                      39    
Sussex                     18
Warwickshire           23
Worcestershire        35


Division Two - % of playing time lost

Derbyshire               17
Essex                       47
Glamorgan                40
Gloucestershire        36
Hampshire                42
Kent                          24
Leicestershire          35
Northamptonshire     33
Yorkshire                  37

As at April 30








Date: 29/04/2012 16:56:28 by Andrew Hignell
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