James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Jonny Bairstow, Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne among players set for action ahead of The Ashes; fewer points awarded for draws in 2023, while Kookaburra ball to be used for two rounds; watch Surrey vs Lancashire on Sky Sports Cricket from 11am, Thursday
Wednesday 5 April 2023 06:07, UK
It's hard not to look ahead to The Ashes as the County Championship returns, with a number of players using the early stages of the domestic season as a tune-up for that series.
With England taking on Australia across five Tests in June and July, the seven rounds of Championship matches across April and May will allow those not at the IPL to reacclimatise to red-ball cricket.
The opening set of fixtures includes the Sky Live meeting between defending champions Surrey and last year's runners-up Lancashire, with that game on Sky Sports Cricket from 11am on Thursday.
England's evergreen seam-bowling duo of James Anderson and Stuart Broad - now the most prolific partnership in Test history, having eclipsed Glenn McGrath and the late Shane Warne's wicket haul of 1,001 over the winter - will surely get a few county outings before The Ashes, for Lancashire and Nottinghamshire respectively.
The same applies to fellow pacemen Ollie Robinson (Sussex), Olly Stone (Nottinghamshire), Saqib Mahmood (Lancashire), Chris Woakes (Warwickshire) and Matthew Potts (Durham).
Left-arm spinner Jack Leach will play for Somerset and teenage leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed will hope for regular games with Leicestershire after a winter in which he became England's youngest men's player across all three formats.
Batting-wise, Ben Stokes, Joe Root and Harry Brook are out in the IPL but Ollie Pope and Ben Foakes will turn out for Surrey, Ben Duckett for Nottinghamshire and Zak Crawley for Kent, with the latter possibly in need of a big score or two.
England have given tremendous backing to opening batter Crawley with head coach Brendon McCullum saying last summer: "I look at Zak and his skillset is not to be a consistent cricketer. He has a game which, when he gets going, can win matches."
But Crawley has not passed fifty in any of his last eight Test innings and looks one of the players at risk as England work out how to get Jonny Bairstow back in once he has recovered from a broken leg he suffered on a golf course after a run-laden 2022 summer.
It certainly won't be Brook missing out, with the 24-year-old scoring four hundreds in six Tests since Bairstow's injury gave him his opportunity and now "undroppable" according to Sky Sports' Michael Atherton.
If it is not Crawley who drops out, it may well be Foakes.
Bairstow is keen to keep wicket for Yorkshire when he returns to action in what his county hope will be mid-to-late May, and if he replaces Foakes as opposed to Crawley in a straight swap in the Test XI, it would prevent England from having to find a makeshift opener.
Foakes is viewed as the superior keeper and is a fine batter in his own right. Showing that with Surrey over the next few weeks would be extremely timely...
Ah yes, the Ashes opposition. Well, Marnus Labuschagne is back at Glamorgan while Steve Smith will play three games for Sussex in May.
That pair will be looking to hoover up runs before they take their places at No 3 and No 4 respectively for Australia in the World Test Championship final against India at The Kia Oval from June 7 and then the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston from June 16.
With Glamorgan and Sussex in Division Two and Lancashire and Nottinghamshire in Division One, we will not see Smith and Labuschagne come up against Broad and Anderson before the Ashes, although Robinson should gain some insight on Smith when he teams with him at the Hove side.
Other Ashes contenders will also enjoy county stints with middle-order batter Peter Handscomb at Leicestershire; openers Cameron Bancroft and Marcus Harris at Somerset and Gloucestershire respectively; and seamer Michael Neser alongside Labuschagne at Glamorgan.
Fast bowler Lance Morris, nicknamed 'The Wild Thing', has recently inked a short-term deal with Northamptonshire and could be in the Ashes mix. He made Test squads over the winter without earning a debut.
Fewer points will be awarded for draws this season, with five for a stalemate compared to eight last year. That change is designed to encourage counties to adopt the attacking philosophy that has revitalised England's Test team under Stokes and McCullum.
Sides must also bat more aggressively to earn batting bonus points, with the first point accrued after scoring 250, up from 200, across the first 110 overs of the first innings. Teams now need to score in excess of four runs an over to reach the new mark of 450, up from 400, required for the full set of five points.
Elsewhere, the Kookaburra ball will be used across the June 25-28 and July 10-13 fixtures as opposed to the Dukes ball.
The Kookaburra, which usually swings and seams less than the Dukes, is used mainly in the southern hemisphere, including Australia, where England have lost 13 and drawn two of their last 15 Tests.
Surrey's trip to Lancashire during round one (April 6-9) and then the match between Middlesex and Northamptonshire at Lord's (April 20-23).
Surrey finished 25 points clear of second-placed Lancashire in the top flight in 2022 as they clinched a 20th outright Championship title and second in five years - although they were thumped by the Red Rose county a week after clinching the title, going down by an innings and 130 runs at Emirates Old Trafford.
Middlesex are back in the top flight for the first time since 2017 after finishing as Division Two runners-up last year, while Northamptonshire finished sixth in Division One in 2022.
Watch The Ashes live on Sky Sports across June and July, starting with the first Test at Edgbaston from June 16.
Surrey begin their County Championship title defence against Lancashire live on Sky Sports Cricket from 11am on Thursday.
