Congratulations to Sussex

It may have been watched at the Oval by no more than a couple of hundred people, to judge from the TV pictures of Lancashire's run-chase against Surrey yesterday, but the final day of the 2007 County Championship was thrilling. Sussex polished off Worcestershire early, as expected, which ended Durham's slim chances of staying top of the table, but if Lancashire could score a whopping 489 in the fourth innings against Surrey, 462 of them on the last day, then they would be the champions for the first time since 1934.

How close it was, how close. ECB flunkies had spent most of the afternoon sat in their car on a lay-by on the M23, prepared to dash north or south to present the trophy and cheque depending on what happened at the Oval. At lunch, Lancashire were 178 for two; at tea, with two wickets falling in the penultimate over before the break, they were 307 for five. Dominic Cork (47) and Saj Mahmood (26 - those are runs, not years, in brackets) took them agonisingly near but when Cork was bowled by Murtaza Hussain, the chase ended 25 runs short of victory. What a finish to a fascinating season.

It may even get a paragraph or two in tomorrow's papers, although Chelsea are playing Manchester United so don't expect too much.

Lancashire fans will look back on this game with regrets. If only for the odd slip, they could have been chasing a much smaller target (failing to take advantage of an easy chance to run out Mark Ramprakash 196 runs before he finally went, for instance) but they should be proud of their team's efforts yesterday. Magnanimously, King Cricket, a Lancashire fan, has awarded Mark Ramprakash a Grimlock, a robot-cum-dinosaur, as a prize for scoring 2,000 runs in a season yet again, the first time in first-clas history that anyone has done that twice in a row.

Comments

[Nick Mallory]

A 'Lancashire fan, has awarded Mark Ramprakash a Grimlock, a robot-cum-dinosaur, as a prize for scoring 2,000 runs in a season yet again, the first time in first-clas history that anyone has done that twice in a row.'

Nobody scored two thousand runs in an English season two seasons in a row before Ramps? Are you sure? It's a certainly a remarkable feat these days when only 16 county games are played and non county games are few and far between but what about the long decades of run scoring before one day cricket came on the scene and the first class programme was reduced?

Jack Hobbs, for instance, scored 2,042 runs in the 1912 English season and followed that with 2,605 in 1913. He scored 2,594 runs in 1919 and 2,827 in 1920. He scored more than 2,000 runs in 1922, 1923 and 1924, scored over 3,000 in 1925 and nearly 3,000 in 1926. He topped 2,000 runs in both 1929 and 1930 as well for good measure.

Herbert Sutcliffe was another heavy scorer. He passed 2,000 runs in both 1922 and 1923 and repeated the feat three years running in 1925, 1926 and 1927. He scored more than 2,000 in 1929 and 1930 and in 1931 and 1932 scored more than 3,000 runs. He went on to score more than 2,000 runs in 1933, 1934 and 1935 as well.

Far from being a unique feat it was actually quite common and most of the great names of English batsmanship achieved it in their day.