County cricket: T20 Blast lets cricket do the talking after quiet buildup

In glorious early summer sunshine, two hours before the start of Surrey’s opening fixture of their T20 Blast season, The Oval is a hive of activity. Stewards, hi-vizzed and as callow-looking as ever, are being briefed; a new member of catering staff is being walked through the settings on the coffee machine; great slabs of food and drinks are being wheeled about the concourse on pallets. There is an air of “the circus has come to town” about the place.

Later these workers will be joined by 16,000 spectators, one of the largest single gathering one could find anywhere in the country last week outside the behemoth of football. And the Blast attracted plenty more spectators elsewhere too (as ever, all cricket needs is the weather). Even if the crowds were not strictly sell-outs, nobody landing from Planet Zog would consider this activity anything other than successful, providing jobs and pleasure to thousands and thousands in the fragile warmth of a May evening.

So why the near invisibility in the media? Why so little marketing (other than that done, creditably, by individual counties)? Why the tedious hum of “franchise cricket” infesting social media again? When people say that county cricket is “not successful”, they mean county cricket is “not successful enough for me” – they will never be satisfied.

The match itself was a curate’s egg of a contest. On a pitch barely discernible from the outfield in its greenish hue, Glamorgan were 67-2 at the halfway point and 150 or so looked a likely target to be set, especially as Sunil Narine was near unhittable, experience gained in 404 previous T20 matches brought to bear in his first for Surrey. But Chris Cooke injected some urgency with the first big hits of the night and Sam