I present an XI of county stalwarts from my lifetime. I have allowed myself one overseas player only, and when it came to the home players the accent was on folk who were IMO treated shabbily by the England selectors. There will be a very brief honourable mentions section at the end. I also have a splendid photo gallery for you – the last couple of days have been genuinely springlike.

THE XI IN BATTING ORDER

1. Daryl Mitchell (Worcestershire, right handed opening batter, occasional medium pacer). While the current pairing at the top of the England order of Duckett and Crawley seems to be functioning fairly well there was a long period after the retirement of Andrew Strauss when England could not find an opener to score consistent runs as Alastair Cook’s partner. Somehow, in spite of scoring almost 14,000 FC runs at an average of 38 Mr Mitchell’s name never came to the attention of the selectors (nb the Daryl Mitchell who plays for NZ is a middle order batter and is eight years younger than the Worcestershire opener).
2. Chris Dent (Gloucestershire, left handed opening batter). Another, like Mitchell, who was superbly consistent (just over 11,000 FC runs at an average of 37, and no attention from the England selectors.
3. Graeme Hick (Worcestershire, right handed batter, occasional off spinner). The only batter ever to score triple centuries in three different decades (1980s, 19902, 2000s). His test returns were decidedly modest (he averaged 31 at that level and only managed five centuries in quite a number of matches), but he was an absolute destroyer of county bowling (Ollie Pope, the current England number three, is at risk of ending his career with a similar record of having destroyed county bowling and not quite done the business at test level, although he has time to rectify that, and has already done more at test level than Hick managed in his career – nevertheless, the wrong way round disparity between the record of Pope of Surrey and that of Pope of England is cause for concern).
4. James Hildreth (Somerset, right handed batter, occasional right arm medium pacer). It borders on ludicrous that a player who scored 18,000 FC runs at 44 finished his career without an international cap, but such was the fate of Somerset stroke maker James Hildreth.
5. David Sales (Northamptonshire, right handed batter). A 17 year old announces himself at first class level by scoring 210* on debut – surely a case if ever there was one for fast tracking, but no. Sales, who added a triple century and a 276* to that debut knock along the way and tallied almost 14,000 FC runs at an average of just over 39 would end his career uncapped by his country.
6. +Ben Foakes (Essex, Surrey, right handed batter, wicket keeper). The best keeper around in the men’s game today (the likes of Eleanor Threlkeld and Rhianna Southby are also superb practitioners of the stumpers art), and a fine middle order batter (Surrey habitually use him at number five, followed by a cluster of all rounders and bowlers). However, after a tour in which England suffered the fate of every recent visiting side from any country to India – namely got well beaten, there are already murmurs about England dropping him for the home summer. In this side, with a genuine all rounder, a bowling all rounder and a batter who bowls in the next three slots this wicket keeping all rounder is unlikely to find himself having to attempt to nurse along genuine tail enders as he did in each of the fourth and fifth tests of the recent tour.
7. Darren Stevens (Leicestershire, Kent, right handed batter, right arm medium pacer). In his Leicestershire days he was treated as a specialist batter and his record in that department did not merit an England call up. He was already past 30 years of age when his move to Kent saw him morph into a genuine all rounder, and his age always counted against him in terms of England selection, even when he kept on going and going into his middle 40s with no sign of his skills declining.
8. Richard Hadlee (Nottinghamshire, right arm fast bowler, left handed batter). I have deliberately chosen an overseas player who served one county for a number of years rather than one of the more modern foreign mercenaries who never develop any loyalties but play instead for whoever will pay them. The fact that he would be in any rational person’s top two or three overseas players of the period under consideration (1980s forward basically, given my age) gives him a strong case anyway. While batting was unquestionable the second string to the bow of one the greatest fast bowlers of all time, 12,000 FC runs at an average of 31 is definitely enough to class him as a bowling all rounder, as is the fact that in 1984 he achieved the season’s double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in first class matches, the first time anyone had achieved the feat since the reduction of the FC season in 1969 to make way for the John Player League, and achieved only once since then, by Franklyn Stephenson, also of Nottinghamshire. Of course in the 2020s 14 game FC season anyone achieveing this feat would be doing something on a par with George Hirst’s ‘double double’ – 2,000 runs and 200 wickets in first class matches for the season – of 1906.
9. *Phil Carrick (Yorkshire, left arm orthodox spinner, right handed batter, captain). He captained Yorkshire at a time when that job was the biggest poison chalice in cricket. He also took 1,081 FC wickets at 29.82, and scored 10,300 FC runs at 22.00 – a handy person to be coming in at number nine.
10. Steve Watkin (Glamorgan, right arm medium fast bowler, right handed batter). Many bowlers with far worse test averages than Watkin’s 27.72 got much more recognition than the tall Welsh seamer, who finished with three international caps. He was a workhorse for Glamorgan, at or near the top of the national bowling averages season after season. He did eventually gain the reward of being part of Glamorgan’s third (and to date last) ever championship winning side in 1996.
11. Jamie Porter (Essex, right arm medium fast bowler, right handed batter). Generally speaking if you want to see a champion side look at the bowling -Yorkshire in the 1900s and 1930s were a much stronger bowling side than theyb were with the bat, and they dominated both decades, Surrey owned the 1950s , again with a bowling dominant side. Similarly Essex dominated the second half of the 2010s, and there were three main reasons for this – Porter and Sam Cook with the new ball and Simon Harmer’s off spin. Porter is now approaching his 31st birthday, which probably means that he will remain uncapped by England, which given that he has 466 FC wickets at 23.75 looks nearly as bizarre as does Hildreth remaining uncapped.

This side has a powerful top five, plenty of scope for runs from the middle and lower middle order, with Foakes and Stevens genuinely front line batters, Hadlee almost so and even Carrick better than most number nines would be in that department. The bowling, with Hadlee’s pace, two very different types of high quality medium-fast in Porter and Watkin, Carrick’s spin and Steven’s medium pace should not struggle to take 20 wickets either. Though I have acknowledged the bowling capacities of some of the batters, I do not see any of them, with the possible exception of Hick on a fourth day pitch, being needed.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Those who read my county all time XIs back in 2020 would have noted from them that if I choose an overseas player I nearly always go for a bowler, and that being the case along with my desire to pick a long serving county player narrowed the potential choices down to two – Hadlee, who I actually opted for, and Malcolm Marshall (Hampshire). There is little to choose between two such outstanding cricketers, and I would be happy to see Marshall at number eight as well.

The spinner was a difficult choice, because with Hick in the ranks I preferred either a left armer or a leggie as my primary spinner. No English leggie has had a really good record in recent years (and Matt Parkinson, the nearest thing to such and animal, would have meant a genuine nine, ten, jack), and not many left armers have been that special either (and the two most obvious candidates, Tufnell and Panesar would cause the same worry as Parkinson batting wise). I could have found another English pacer, and picked Warne as overseas player, but I did not think his period at Hampshire was extensive enough to qualify.

Had I not been concentrating my attention on those who were badly treated by selectors then Marcus Trescothick (Somerset) would have had Chris Dent’s slot. Two men of Kent, Mark Benson (one England cap in 1986) and David Fulton (uncapped by England) were in with a shout for Mitchell’s slot.

Two other opening bowlers to be ignored by England in spite of excellent FC records were Ben Coad (Yorkshire) and Ben Sanderson (Northamptonshire).

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…