Fixtures 2020 and Festival implications (if any)

[procswrongfoot]

Whilst I fully acknowledge that our prospects for this season are far from over, I simply can't refrain from looking ahead and worrying about the potential for the fixtures in 2020. Given that the ECB are forcing the horrendous/horrible 'Hundred centre stage next season, how will the actual cricket season all fit together?

Anyway, after months of vagueness, George Dobell in his recent ESPN Cricinfo article (9 August) has managed to shed just a little light on next season. To summarise some details from his article:

First round of Championship cricket starts on 13 April.

Last day of Championship cricket finishes on 30 September 2020.

T20 Blast group games - the majority (105 out of 126 fixtures) will be played on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.

The 'Hundred' - starts Friday, 17 July with the final on Saturday, 15 August 2020.

The 50 over comp (played mid July to mid August) - the ECB have now relented to allow one overseas, per team, per game.

So how will this affect the Festival? Checking the Cheltenham College term dates for next year, their summer term ends on Saturday, 27 June 2020. Accordingly, there does seem a decent window of opportunity for our traditional Festival to take place during the first 2 weeks of July. Could we see 2 Championship games, our last T20 group home match and finish the Festival with our first match of the group 50 over comp?

With regard to the county cricket season as a whole, I would speculate that it might work out something like the following:

11 APRIL TO 11 JULY 2020
9 rounds of Championship cricket.
14 group T20 matches for each county. (Sunday afternoons during May, largely evening matches thereafter).

MID JULY TO MID AUGUST 2020
8 group 50 over matches for each county.
The 'Hundred competition to take place at the same time. (Personally determined to totally ignore/disregard this unwanted and irrelevant mickey mouse nonsense).

REMAINDER OF AUGUST 2020
2 rounds of Championship cricket

SEPTEMBER 2020
Final 3 rounds of Championship cricket.
T20 quarter finals plus Finals Day.

Rather wonder how close my speculation we be to the actual reality for next season?

[procswrongfoot]

A few days back, l was casually perusing elsewhere and l rather stumbled upon a couple of interesting and completely separate comments (on two individual cricket forums) regarding next seasons fixtures.

Apparently, the top 5 from Div 1 in 2019 will only play each other once in 2020. They will play the 6th and 7th placed teams twice, and also the 3 promoted teams twice.

If this is true, then for us this would result in the following fixtures:
Home and Away games against - Essex / Somerset / Hants / Kent / Yorks
One match only - Lancs / Northants / Warks / Surrey

Not entirely sure what to make of this. Perhaps designed to preserve the status of the top sides, whilst making life as difficult as possible for the promoted sides !!!

Please note that the two separate comments regarding next seasons fixtures came across as statements of fact, rather than mere speculation. Of course, l guess that this might well have been covered in some previously published article (Cricinfo perhaps?), but it is certainly news to me.

Anyway, l thought it worthy of sharing. (Apologies if this is already common knowledge).

[procswrongfoot]

Well, almost there. Fixtures to be supposedly announced later this month.

Further to my original Mystic Meg speculation back in August, we now have a much clearer indication of the fixture list structure for next season. Significantly helped by an article last week in the Cricketer Magazine (who had sight of the draft schedule sent to county CEOs), we now have the following information from the draft:

County Championship
Each county to play 14 matches within the 16 four-day rounds of cricket.
7 rounds to be completed by 25th May.
3 rounds starting 14th and 28th June and 5th July.
2 rounds starting 23rd and 29th August.
Final 4 rounds, starting 8th, 14th, 21st and 27th September.

Vitality Blast
From May 28th to June 26th. (With one round of CC in the middle).
Quarter finals - August 18th to 21st.
Finals Day - September 5th.

50 Over Comp
Commences July 18th.
Final September 19th.

HOWEVER. From a newspaper article of yesterday, suggests last minute changes planned by the clowns masquerading as th ECB. Potentially scrapping the September 27th round of CC matches, leading to 15 rounds rather than 16. Additionally, the CC start date brought forward to Sunday, April 12th, ensuring that the first 12 rounds of CC all feature play at weekends (hooray!!!).

Overall, with a modicum of flexibility, the chances of staging a decent Cheltenham Festival are seemingly promising. If so, who would you like us to play in the Championship at the Festival? My vote would go for fixtures against Yorkshire and Warks.

Who could ever forget seeing the absolutely memorable hat trick from the magnificent Proc at Cheltenham against the Yorkies in 1979. Even more remarkable was that all 3 dismissals were LBW victims (all top order batsmen). Somehow, my rather aging memory thought that it included the wicket of Boycott, but on checking the relevant scorecard it was in fact Lumb, John Hampshire and a young Bill Athey (with Boycott leaning on his bat at the other end). Oh happy, happy days.

Anyway, I rather digress. Always get rather excited at the prospect of the fixtures release. Helps get me through the dismal winter months.

[procswrongfoot]

Well informed opinion/speculation/rumour is all pointing to the fact that the fixtures are being released on the 26th November and/or 27th November. Don't be too surprised if the fixtures for the Horrible Hundred are released first, just to emphasise the great importance that the ECB give to their Mickey Mouse competition.

Perhaps of greater significance to us, is the apparent strong rumour that the 'uncontested toss' rule is being scrapped for next season. If so, this would have important implications for our home matches at Bristol........getting somewhat inevitable and rather boring that with the present no toss rule we will always be asked to bat first.

[procswrongfoot]

Have just seen that our away RLC match against Durham is being played at Scarborough (Tuesday, 21st July), as announced by Durham today.

I seem to remember that when the original fixture list was released, the venue for this match was shown as a TBC. Thought it rather strange at the time, when the Riverside would be the normal automatic venue choice.

Anyway Scarborough it is.......a quite bizarre choice.