Cricket in G7 - A Surrey/Middlesex stitch up! And why Agema NPC's can not be Trusted

In latest edition of The Glori du Roi - James III has decided to a) Unite his three Kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland & b) prove he is one of the good Guys by means of the introduction of standard laws for cricket and a combined league covering all three kingdoms.

While no reasonable person can doubt the wisdom of civilizing the Scots and Irish via the medium of cricket sadly King James seems to have left the actual arrangements to a AGEMA NPC:

" The Patron of Marylebone Cricket Club, Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, Lennox & Aubigny, has outlined rules for cricket, standardising them for the game. “The runs scored by each team will be totalled up over their 87 games and the winning team will be the one who has the most runs, not the one who has won the most games."  

Seems that each of the other 87 teams will play each other once between May and September.  Which rather leaves questions of home and away advantage and travel undecided.  Do you stay at home for half the season and then go on tour for the other half?  Basically it looks less like a cricket season and more like Baseball to me but assumeing that such questions can be sorted out what got me was the total fix put in by the the Surrey or Middlesex backing Duke of Richmond:

1) First the rule about the side which scores the most runs over a season wins - Due to dryer conditions and soil types which result in faster outfields and less movement of the ball cricket matches on the Eastern side of the Country see a lot more runs scored than in matches in the West.  Also eastern counties like Middlesex, Surrey, Kent lose a lot less time to rain stopped play than in the west.

Basically this rule means Somerset and the Welsh and Irish do not stand a chance.

2) Also in a filthy bit of gerrymandering the London biased Duke of Richmond has split Gods own team the mighty Yorkshire into three!  So instead of one great team Surrey & Middlesex are up against three average ones.

Stuart Bailey wrote:While no reasonable person can doubt the wisdom of civilizing the Scots and Irish via the medium of cricket ...

I'm so glad you approve, Stuart.       I'm sure it gave you a nice surprise when you opened the newspaper and instead of talk of war and more mudslinging, it was all about cricket!

I will admit that working out how the League was going to operate over the course of a season was challenging, as was deciding on the number of teams.  There was no historic justification for choosing some English counties but not others, or for neglecting the Welsh and Irish.  Teams were historically 11 men by 1700 so I felt obliged to stick with that.

I'm sure the noble patrons of each county team will find a way to play all the matches required (the number of days in the season does actually allow for a month of rain).  If every team is touring around then there is no sustainable home/away advantage, and by totalling up the number of runs over a season it does not disadvantage any team.  Also it makes it impossible to bribe players to lose a match since to make any difference to the final result they would have to play badly in all their matches and no team would want to go back home after having failed so badly.  The pressure will be on all of them to play fairly and to the best of their ability.

Your concern about the wetter western counties may well be valid, but they will just have to be better at hitting 6 instead of 4 - the ground won't count against them then.  Also if the ground is wet won't the ball be slower and therefore easier to hit?  Western counties may well find this gives them an advantage.

Of course with 3 teams Yorkshire has a greater chance of winning, everything being equal.   I'd have made it 4 teams if I could, but would have run out of players.   There's more than enough talent in Yorkshire to take on the world.  

Will we see a team from Flanders joining the League?  

And of course the really big question is ... what will the foreign ambassadors make of cricket when they get to watch a match?

Not sure whether I should vote in your poll, but in the absence of a 3rd option praising King James for being a wonderful person, I may well have to lean towards the first option!