Victory for Worcestershire and other non-Test grounds in the quarter-finals will send a defiant message that change to the county game must come alongside a respect for the past
David Hopps13-Aug-2015Modernisers at the ECB might advocate the financial appeal of city cricket and dream of an English professional future no longer entirely enslaved, as they see it, to the traditional county game, but out in the Shires, the cricketing rebellion has been hard to quell.Five of the eight counties in the NatWest Blast quarter-finals play at non-Test match grounds and although Essex failed to outwit Birmingham at Edgbaston, if Worcestershire silence Hampshire in their first-ever home quarter-final or Kent’s exciting all-English side send Lancashire packing at Canterbury in the final tie on Saturday then the egalitarian nature of the county game will sound a defiant message that change must come alongside a respect for the past.It is worth remembering, in any case, that the headquarters of 15 of the 18 first-class counties happen to be in officially-designated cities – only Durham, based a few miles up the road from the city of Durham in Chester-le-Street, Northampton, which applied for city status unsuccessfully in 2000, and Taunton cannot claim as much – and in Worcestershire’s case, they have a 12th century cathedral overlooking the ground as a permanent reminder of the fact.The terminology being used, in other words, is shorthand at best, disingenuous at worst. The appetite, for some, is an elite T20 league based on the biggest grounds, which can create a football-style atmosphere. But even football does not ban the likes of Bournemouth from playing in the Premier League. If the Test match grounds want to dominate, they could begin by winning cricket matches rather than benefit from proposals for a closed shop.Worcestershire are one of only two first-class counties never to reach a Finals Day, but their first home quarter-final encourages them to believe that they can do so at the fifth attempt. Their opponents, Hampshire, have so much T20 pedigree they should be sponsored by Crufts – five Finals Days in succession emphasise that T20 is not just down to luck – but they face a real working dog in Worcestershire, who under their hard-headed coach Steve Rhodes have gained a reputation for hard work in adversity.Nowhere has that dedication been seen in the last 10 days than in the attempts of their skipper, Daryl Mitchell, to recover from a hamstring injury sustained in a Royal London Cup match against Surrey at Kia Oval.Mitchell, named in the squad, needs every minute of recovery time, and it is fair to assume that Worcestershire will not be too displeased if a bad weather forecast for Friday proves accurate and the match has to be delayed until the reserve day. To field him would be a “calculated risk” in the mind of Worcestershire’s physio Ben Davies, but it a risk the county is desperate to take.Mitchell offers Worcestershire the solidity at the top of the order around which the likes of Moeen Ali, excited to be released by England, the T20 specialist Tom Kohler-Cadmore and another destructive hitter, Ross Whiteley, can flourish. As ever, much attention will rest on Saeed Ajmal with the ball and if his Championship form has been mediocre this season as his remodelled action has had detrimental effect – 16 wickets at 41.50 – he has acquitted himself very well in T20, with 21 wickets at 14.76 in the group stages and only going at 7.05 an over.Davies estimates that Mitchell’s injury usually requires two to three weeks recovery time, but along with fitness and conditioning coach Ross Dewar, he has clocked in daily at 7.30am to try to get Mitchell on the field, utilising an anti-gravity treadmill in Droitwich where, two days after the injury, he underwent light jogging at only 20% of his body weight.Davies told the Worcestershire website: “He was fine and completely pain free. Since then we’ve done a lot of dry-needling soft tissue work. We’ve done massage and therapy ball work with him. We got him up to 100 per cent body weight again through a gradual programme.”He had a hit and did some controlled fielding on Wednesday and he’ll do some fielding practice and have a hit on Thursday and, if all goes well on Thursday, he will be straight in Friday and play. Ideally we would have liked two to three weeks but, a home quarter-final and your captain, you’ve just got to push to try and get him fit.”Hampshire have not been their usual selves. They stole into the quarter-finals with wins in their last two games, but that improved form has persisted in the in the Royal London One-Day Cup, leaving their captain James Vince, the fourth highest run-scorer in this year’s T20 competition with 534 runs at 48.54, confident the quarter-final tie has come at a good time.Of more concern for Hampshire, as favourites, is that they have never met Worcestershire in T20 before. “Worcestershire are not a team that we’ve played an awful lot against across all formats,” Vince said, “but they’re an organised side and we still know the players reasonably well. They play similar cricket to us in that they have bowlers that like to take the pace off.”