Meet the new boss, not quite the same as the old boss

There is an underbelly to the county championship. For all of its romantic evocations of the turning of England's seasons, it has been a place where men's dreams have died, where their image of themselves has been reshaped, where thwarted ambition has blackened. It has its dark side.

In that regard it always has its symbols, its totems, too. For a decade, it was Barry Richards at Hampshire, a man whose talent engaged in a long and sometimes futile battle with his ennui. There was the brooding, brutal presence of Sylvester Clarke at the Oval, a putative king in exile. Mike Proctor at Gloucester wheeled in endlessly in lieu of having anyplace else to do it. There were others too, and all were players who found it a place of last resort.

For Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash it was something different, a way of slaking a thirst perhaps. For seasons now, Ramprakash has been its premier player. It has probably been a long time since May has come and gone without a hundred from him in the books, but he is over 40 now and what could once be summoned at will doesn't arrive so easily now. It could be his final year.

So who will succeed him? The answer is simple: it can only be Marcus Trescothick. The vagaries of the modern calendar have denied him a thousand runs by the end of May. He has piled up 978 already. His exile to county cricket is of a different sort, and he'll be a different kind of king. There is still a sense of what might have been about him, but he wears it more lightly. The competition needs someone like him at the top as its symbol of excellence. While he's there, as with Ramps, it's in safe hands.

The thick end of the wedge

There's no money in county cricket. Everyone knows that. Or rather, everyone did know that. Things ain't what they used to be, even at the bottom of LV Division Two, as Gus Fraser, newly appointed Director of Cricket at Middlesex, discovered during his first season.

'It's certainly a different game to the one I left in 2002,' he said in a nice interview with Andy Afford in All Out Cricket magazine. 'The players are far more demanding than they used to be, and their expectations for themselves and everyone else are far higher. At times you wish they would just concentrate on what they are supposed to do well'.

Good to hear it's all hunky-dory down at Lord's, then.

'There is a bit of a culture of players wanting to know where the club is going before committing their future. There is an expectation that the club should be out there signing up all these wonderful names... For instance, do you sign a 'name' overseas coach in order to placate the players, media etc? The problem is, in doing that, you're probably waving goodbye to the thick end of 200k...'

'...And how much is an overseas player going to help the club when he is likely to be there for a four to six week period. The challenge then is to find someone below that 'superstar' level. Someone who wants to play for you and is available all year...'

Someone like Marcus Trescothick, maybe, interviewed a few pages later by Afford again. 'At the moment, in-demand players with big names and reputations are being touted around, expecting salaries of 80-120k,' Afford writes. 'As a point of reference, I send some hypothetical text messages out to county managers and coaches. My text reads, 'hypothetically, what price Tres...?' 

The average price? £175,000 per season. And, as Afford notes, 'he would be worth every penny'.

Wonder if one of his messages was sent to Gus?