Chaotic overseas recruitment, the regional era ends and Jude Bellingham's cricketing exploits - the best of Nick Friend in 2024

As The Cricketer reviews 2024, we're looking back on our favourite pieces from the last 12 months that you may have missed

As The Cricketer reviews 2024, we're looking back at the outstanding journalism and reporting delivered by our team over the past 12 months.

Features writer Nick Friend remains The Cricketer's chief long-form storyteller, primarily delivering deep dives on the men's and women's domestic game during 2024. Here, we look at some of his stand-out pieces from the past year.

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There was a time when Dent was a leftfield, unexplored shout for an opening berth in England's Test team; between 2013 and 2019, he exceeded the landmark of 900 runs in all but one season. In the same timeframe, his average dropped below 44 just twice, and at the forefront of Gloucestershire's successful promotion push just before the pandemic, he churned out four centuries, four fifties and 1,087 runs – one of four first-class campaigns in which he scored more than 1,000 runs. Those efforts were double-edged, though.

Read: Chris Dent: "Whenever I've done really well in my career, it's been a bit of a worry"

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All 18 counties have similar stories to tell of the challenges presented by the shape of the domestic game in its current guise, particularly – though not exclusively – during the rigmarole of the Blast group stage. But it is easy – too easy, in fact – to lay sole blame at the feet of the schedulers, tasked with the impossible job of satisfying a litany of stakeholders, given the amount of cricket set out to be played and the shortage of days in which to get it done.

Read: Eat, sleep, play, repeat: The relentless demands of the county circuit

^{Sunrisers signed off the regional era in style, winning the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images for Surrey CCC)}

The regional years have been brief, but if all goes according to plan from here, they ought to be remembered as a fundamental period that brought in domestic professionalisation and, therefore, a major upturn in the on-field standard. The gap between county cricket and Team England went from being logically insurmountable – there were central contracts and then there were amateurs, often losing money just to play for their counties – to, at its best, interchangeable.

Read: The end of the women's regional era – from the players' perspective

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Toby, the younger of her two sons, was six at the time of the Beijing Games, but he travelled with his maternal grandmother, his mother's sisters and his cousins to cheer on his parents. Parent plural, because Dag, his father, was representing Sweden in the same individual eventing competition as his mother. They had divorced three years earlier, but so much of Albert's childhood was spent "in the horsebox, travelling around" that it feels remarkable in itself for him to have found the time to become a professional cricketer.

Read: Toby Albert, son of Olympians: "I was too young to realise how cool it was"

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This is a mad story, a team that became a running joke during the initial stages of the regional age, waving it into the sunset as winners of a competition in which they'd never even reached the knockout phase. It took Sunrisers until 2023 to win a 50-over game; in four years, they managed just three T20 victories at all.

Read: As the sun sets on the regional era, it finally rises for the team that simply couldn't win

^{Few cricketing stories were more heartening than Gloucestershire's run to Blast glory (Harry Trump/Getty Images)}

All that Ollie Price was thinking about, with 13 runs to win and 10 wickets to spare, was how he'd burst from the dugout onto the field. Gloucestershire, unfancied and unfashionable, were on the brink, and you're about to be a Blast champion.

Read: "The best day of my career, if not my life": How Gloucestershire won the T20 Blast

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Brown and Josh Baker were best mates, five years apart but thick as thieves. And, when tragedy struck in early May, the staff at Worcestershire – where the pair had become inseparable before Brown's departure – agreed he was the right player to speak a month later at a celebration of Baker's life.

Read: Pat Brown: "Cricket's just not a big deal anymore; a bad day's cricket is still a pretty good day"

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At one point, away at Somerset, during last year's One-Day Cup, he was minutes from returning, only for his back to go into spasm as Will Rhodes, the captain, walked past him en route to the toss. "We tried and tried," he says. "I felt ashamed to have to pull out." In a competitive field of nadirs, this was one of the grimmest.

Read: Liam Norwell, a story of rank bad luck

^{Liam Norwell confirmed his decision to hang up his bowling boots in November (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)}

Fast-forward by two decades, and the state of play has altered dramatically, to a point where – four years after the ECB approved an increase in first-class overseas players from one to two, in light of the impact of Brexit on the Kolpak arrangement – some counties are openly wondering whether the hassle is more than it's worth.

Read: "It's absolute carnage": Inside county cricket's battle for overseas players

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Shortly after Worcestershire take on Northamptonshire at New Road on June 16, England's will take the field against Serbia. It is, of course, too far beyond a nonsense to dress that up as any kind of sliding-doors moment – Bellingham ultimately played age-group cricket as a sporty kid for a couple of summers – but there is at least one professional sporting connection to his Hagley exploits.

Read: Jude Bellingham and Adam Wharton: England's Play Cricket midfield pairing

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