County Cricket / Ralph Ellis / 17 September 2008 /

Ralph Ellis gives us a summary of who needs to do what as the Division One County Championship goes to the wire.

It is nine seasons since cricket's County Championship was split into two divisions with the idea of making the game more competitive. This season has finally given the powers that be exactly what they wanted.

With a week - and two rounds of matches - to go there are five teams in with a realistic shout of winning the title. And for once the weather is promising to stand back and let most of the players get on with settling the issue! That's a blow if you want to back leaders Hampshire who started this morning the outsiders of the five at [22.0]. Any other week of this rain sodden summer and you could sit back and watch them hang on to their one point advantage while everybody else was in the pavilion watching the heavens open! Instead they are not playing today and will inevitably have been dropped out of the running by the time next week's fixtures begin.

So where to look for the winners? While all the other papers are focused on the Champions League and the Ryder Cup, this morning's Daily Mail finds some space to sum up the issues and their Cricket Correspondent Paul Newman has some good clues for us.

He rates Somerset as the best placed side to win what would be their first title, but I can't agree. Andrew Caddick is returning to strengthen a side that didn't play well against Durham last week, and the Cider County have enough quality in their line up to win at Yorkshire this week then against Lancashire at Taunton to make them a good gamble at [3.6]. But - and here's the big but - it would be their first title and that heaps big pressure on any side. The performance against Durham already showed signs of crumbling, and Sod's law would dictate this is the week Michael Vaughan finds the big innings to justify his new central contract.

Kent are the great outsiders with a fixture list that presents them a fantastic opportunity. They start at relegation threatened Lancashire today and then get a home game against Durham to try to tie things up. Two wins would do it and [11] is a tempting price. But again the mental side will tell - after just missing out in three one-day competitions have Robert Key's side got the strength to be more than nearly men? It's unlikely.

That leaves us with two to pick from. Notts ought to wrap up one win at The Oval against a Surrey side who are all but relegated and are giving chances to some youngsters. They are [2.02] to do so, but beware. This could be a bit like when football teams who are already relegated suddenly produce their best form because they are relaxed with the pressure off. Those Surrey kids showed their promise in their Pro40 win over Leicestershire while Charlie Shreck was bowling a last over against Sussex that cost him 16 runs and his side the trophy!

So it's back to Durham. This has been Steve Harmison's season and it's hard to think there isn't one last twist in his summer's tale to finish up with a Championship medal. He's been in devastating form - especially at home - all year and now comes a big chance at Chester-le-Street to finish the job. Durham also have Liam Plunkett and Graham Onions returning to a squad that has won more matches than anybody else. Okay it might be safe and boring to just go with the favourite but odds of [2.72] this morning are still pretty handy. And the old adage applies: A short price winner is always better than a long priced loser.

Five things you might not know about the County Championship history

1.The official first season was in 1890 after eight counties set up the competition, with the winners Surrey based on the number of losses deducted from the number of wins

2 .Before that it was normally settled by who the newspapers agreed was the best team! The earliest recorded reference to a champion county was in 1728 but that implies there had been others before it

3. Matches, of course, are now four days, and used to be three days before 1993. But for one season in 1919 they were just two days

4. It's widely argued that the competition will soon die out because of lack of interest. That's not new either - the same claim was made in a book in 1963

5. Yorkshire have won the title most times with 30 plus one shared, while Derbyshire have finished bottom more often than anybody else (14 times, two more than Somerset).

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