And anyway, Yorkshire won’t miss Darren Gough until they prepare decent batting pitches. Any old Hamilton, Hoggard or Hutchison can take a hatful at Headingley.Close’s line is that the young players on the circuit won’t learn unless they are playing against the best. It seems to have escaped his notice that many of the current England team are not big achievers at county level.Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick, the batting finds of the moment, started the summer with career averages of 33 and 29 respectively Mike Atherton hasn’t made 1,000 runs in a season since 1995. Alec Stewart’s loyalty to Surrey is undoubted, but he only turns it on for them about twice a season. Dominic Cork and Craig White were not picked on the strength of their county stats. Out of the 11 heroes of The Oval, only Graeme Hick and Andy Caddick are big fish in the small pool of county cricket.It’s true that the county game needs more players of the highest class, but the answer is not to rush them in from a Test match, like in the bad old days.

The answer is to allow each county to sign a second overseas player.They are liable to miss a chunk of the season, to play in Sri Lanka or Singapore, but not half as much of it as the England players. And the fashion for Australian second XI-ers has meant that some big stars from elsewhere have yet to be snapped up. Among the international stars not currently attached to a county, and not necessarily unavailable, are Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Abdur Razzaq, Shahid Afridi, Courtney Walsh, Jonty Rhodes, Shaun Pollock, Nantie Hayward, Ricky Ponting, Jason Gillespie, Brett Lee, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Carl Hooper (reported to be returning to the West Indies side for the winter), Chris Cairns, Stephen Fleming, Daniel Vettori, Heath Streak, Andy Flower, Javagal Srinath – that’s one per county and a couple to spare.A few may disappoint, as Sourav Ganguly has at Lancashire. But most will pay for themselves – and if each team has two, more of their time could be spent coaching and mixing with the kids.The standard argument against more imports is that they take the place of young English players – debatable as counties are just as likely to give fringe places to ageing time-servers – but it’s a view that can be dismissed altogether now that places are being vacated by England players – 15 or 16 of them next year, if Duncan Fletcher has his way, rather than 12.Young players learn fastest when they are exposed to new ideas and sustained excellence.

Overseas stars bring rather more of these commodities than solid English journeymen.The moment that Hampshire’s young batsmen will remember most vividly from their difficult summer will be the duel that Warne fought with Rahul Dravid when they played Kent.It’s too early to pass judgment on the two-division championship, but one thing has become clear in its first year: bonus points, never a great idea, are now an even worse one. Among the six teams jostling for promotion from the Second Division are two that have won only two of their 15 matches, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire. They haven’t lost much either (Warwickshire twice, Notts three times) but they are essentially being rewarded for collecting draws and bonus points. The first rule of sporting leagues is that they should be simple; the second is that they should be an accurate reflection of quality Bonus points are neither. If cricket had a dead-simple football-style system, three points for a win and one for a draw, there would only be four teams fighting for those last two promotion slots, and Warwickshire and Notts would not be among them.That’s it from me for another season To end with, a useless fact. When Mike Atherton made that great 108 at The Oval, it was the first time he had ever reached a hundred in the third innings of a Test match. Strange but true.Tim de Lisle is editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and wisden ..

Surrey have been warned to expect a Lancashire team hell-bent on revenge when the sides mett for the finale of the County Championship season at Old Trafford today. Surrey have been warned to expect a Lancashire team hell-bent on revenge when the sides mett for the finale of the County Championship season at Old Trafford today.
The title-holders Surrey can keep the silverware in The Oval trophy cabinet as soon as they chalk up one bonus point, which they will gain merely by claiming three first-innings Lancashire wickets or scoring 200 themselves.That would be enough to leave their opponents with the sole concern of battling it out with Yorkshire for the £50,000 runners-up prize in the First Division. But Lancashire’s coach Bobby Simpson is desperate to make amends for the 272-run thrashing Surrey dished out to his team last month.He said: “We want to show Surrey we’re a good side. We beat them in the NatWest Trophy quarter-final this season, and it would be nice to beat them in the final game of the season.”When we played them at The Oval earlier this season it was our worst performance of the summer, both with the bat and the ball. We’ve blown hot and cold for most of the season and we saved our worst performance for that match.”But Surrey’s cricket manager, Keith Medlycott, is determined to finish the 2000 season on a high note. He said: “We have played fantastic cricket over the course of the season, and it would be fitting to finish the year with a win.”Lancashire’s captain, John Crawley, will miss the match with appendicitis, but Surrey have no injury worries.Yorkshire need to make the most of their game against all-but-relegated Hampshire at Southampton while hoping Lancashire have another off-match, but their opponents are determined that the last Championship match played at Southampton..