County competition heats up

Dean Wilson is the cricket correspondent for the UK's Daily Mirror

We are slap bang in the middle of the English summer and for the first time since 2005 it really is a proper summer.

Every day I expect to pull back the curtains and be greeted with a wall of rain, but instead no. It is gloriously sunny and bright and well, er, a little bit Australian.

I've been telling the kids to slip, slap and slop as they play in the garden and the paddling pool, but they are only little and sometimes you've just got to grab them.

For those that are a little bit older and have been freed from the shackles of long school days, the county clubs are ready to welcome them with open arms and a feast of one day cricket.

The Championship is on the back burner and the Royal London one day cup is up and running, with four T20 Blast quarterfinals to come over this weekend.

These are the forms of cricket that the ECB believe will be most attractive to the younger audience and after some of the opening fixtures returned giant scores you can see why.

But first, attention must turn to the T20 Blast which has whittled 18 counties down to eight over the course of the first half of the summer and there was at least one major surprise in the lineup.

Yorkshire had started so strongly that everyone assumed they would waltz into the knockout stages especially with the parting gift of 89 from 41 balls from Aaron Finch before he joined up with an Aussie training camp.

But alas 200-5 in their 20 overs was not enough to deny an ever improving Nottinghamshire side who countered with the big hitting Alex Hales and reached their target with four balls to spare.

The defeat meant that Yorkshire needed the Birmingham Bears (fancy new name for Warwickshire) to slip up against Leicestershire and they didn't.

The eight quarter-finalists are Lancashire v Glamorgan, Surrey v Worcestershire, Essex v Warwickshire, and Nottinghamshire v Hampshire.

Lots of familiar names in there, but incredibly only two of them, Surrey and Hampshire, have ever won the title. 

I expect to see a new name on it this time, with Notts and Essex the two teams to keep an eye on.

The Royal London Cup kicked off this week and unsurprisingly the better T20 sides won most of the 50-over contests, although there were one or two shocks such as Derbyshire's demolition of Hampshire.

Thanks to twin tons from Wes Durston and Wayne Madsen, Derbyshire smashed 340 in their 50 overs and never looked back.

As an aside – do you know what world record Wayne Madsen holds? Answer at the bottom.

Hurt by their failure in being bowled out for 204, Hampshire took out their anger on Lancashire in their next game by smashing an incredible 360 from 50 overs thanks to Glenn Maxwell's rapid fire 146 from 96 balls.

Maxwell is the sort of player around whom a one day cup winning run can be built, and by thrashing 22 fours and 2 sixes he certainly put on a show for the kids.

It is still very early days in the tournament, but the good weather should make for decent totals and plenty of excitement.

There was certainly a ripple of excitement at the news that Kevin Pietersen had been officially signed by the Melbourne Stars for the Big Bash. 

His exploits for the Delhi Daredevils in the IPL and Surrey in the T20 Blast have been poor by his standards.

He is due to feature in the quarter-final before heading to the Caribbean to play for the hapless St Lucia Zouks. 

Perhaps that is the stage upon which he will come alive, because he cannot continue to trade off former glories forever, he is too good for that.

*Wayne Madsen holds the world record for the number of taps of a cricket ball on a bat in one minute – 282.