The world is a pretty scary place at the moment. The amount of bad news and the speed with which the situation is deteriorating is alarming. Anything written is out of date almost before it is published.
At a time like this sport seems to be almost an irrelevance. To write about sport at a time like this could be seen as disrespectful. But that is not my intention. I hope that many of my readers will, like me, feel the need to hold onto reality and the things that make us happy as we navigate through this terribly difficult time.
It seems almost certain that the start of the domestic cricket season will be delayed. We have no idea how long but have to hope that the season will start in time to allow a county championship season to be played long enough to have some integrity.
A Championship season which allows the teams in each division to play each other once would be an absolute minimum and would, hopefully, allow the one-day cup and T20 (perhaps in a similarly cut-down guise) to retain some credibility.
The worry for all faithful cricket supporters is that the county game in 2020 will be sacrificed by the ECB to allow The Hundred to take place. Given the events of the last couple of years, there is little faith left in our collective tanks towards the Board that they will do the right thing.
From a purely parochial viewpoint, the question for the Board is what they will do to the 12 point deduction imposed on Somerset last November. The fair thing to do will be to pro-rate the deduction in line with the proportion of the championship season lost.
Whether that happens we wait to see. Whether the current crisis ends in time for there to be any cricket at all in 2020 also remains to be seen. We live in hope for our sport but most of all we pray for anyone impacted by this dreadful virus.
