County Cricket / Ralph Ellis / 09 April 2010 /

The County Championship starts today, the earliest it's ever started, and Ralph Ellis tells us why we punters need to spend as much time working out which players will be available and when as we do working out who will win the most matches...

Every sport is beset by arguments between club and country. Manchester United's gamble this week on Wayne Rooney's fitness and what it might mean to England's World Cup is the tip of a very large iceberg.

But at least in football if a fit player is called up to represent his nation it only harms his club if he gets an injury. He doesn't miss games. The same is almost true in rugby where the Guinness Premiership dates have been massaged to minimise clashes with either the Six Nations or the Autumn schedule.

But in cricket it's still a very different story. For a county club the reward for producing a real star talent is to wave him goodbye and mostly only see him on the telly. How Durham, for instance, must have wished that Paul Collingwood had been just a fraction less successful so England ignored him and he could have stayed with them all year round.

The command that the relentless fixture list of Test, One Day International and Twenty20 games have over the domestic issue makes it tough for us punters too. Today is the start of the County Championship programme - the earliest it has ever begun, incidentally - and the big challenge is to guess which players might be lost to which countries.

For instance I fancy Somerset as the outstanding value bet at [13.0] to take the title. Third last year as they grew into the top division after gaining promotion, signing Indian spinner Murali Kartik is a significant step forward, and could be just the right move to give them more variety on Taunton's relaid square. Pace bowler Charl Willoughby got 54 wickets last year but they too often had to rely on seam, and the arrival of 33-year-old Kartik from Middlesex could make a key difference once he arrives from the IPL.

But for the Cidermen to land their generous odds they need Craig Kieswetter to do okay in the World Twenty20 Cup, but not be so fantastically successful that he gets picked in the Test side. They also have to hope that another recruit from Middlesex, Nick Compton (grandson of the great double international Denis) gets bundles of runs but not so many that he is promoted too rapidly from the England A squad to Test level.

The saving grace is that they are guaranteed Marcus Trescothick won't be called away. After England's selectors resisted the clamour for him to be brought in as a quick fix for the last Ashes Test last summer he's certain to stay and emulate last year's haul of nearly 2,000 County Championship runs. He's stepped up to the captaincy too, bringing vastly experienced leadership to compensate for the loss of Justin Langer.

I don't think Durham at [2.36] offer any value. Steve Harmison won't be called up by his country but is getting older and there must be question marks over how his fitness will stand up. And [6.6] shots Hampshire will miss the fiery pace of Chris Tremlett from their ranks now he has moved to Surrey.

Somerset also have the canny experience of director of cricket Brian Rose, the man who handled the likes of Ian Botham and Viv Richards during the county's glory days of the 1980s. It all suggests they could do well - just as long, peculiarly, as they don't do too well!

Five things you might not know about Murali Kartik

Born in September 1976 in Chennai, he started out as a very average medium pacer before being persuaded to try bowling spin

He was labelled a trouble maker for being overly aggressive, but got backing from coach Kapil Dev who described him as having the best attitude of any cricketer he'd worked with in 20 years.

He was chosen in 2000 for the first intake when India set up a National Cricket Academy in Bangalore, but then was expelled along with Harbhajan Singh for disciplinary reasons

In 2005 he played club cricket in England for Ramsbottom and was picked up at the end of the season by Lancashire - taking ten wickets in his debut County Championship match against Essex

He credits wife Shweta with calming down his fiery personality. She travels with him around the world.

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