Essex have opportunity to cement golden era

For eight of the 18 counties, the truncated 2020 season is over. Eight are through to a Vitality Blast quarter-final next Thursday, while two more meet from tomorrow in a five-day final in the Bob Willis Trophy.

Players are calling it a “once in a lifetime” game. Many have never played a five-day match, and for it to be this year’s opening first-class fixture at Lord’s – albeit with construction work ongoing – gives it a special feel.

It is satisfying that, even though the competition’s succinct format was necessarily imperfect (just two finalists advancing from three groups), the two best red-ball teams in the country in recent years – Essex and Somerset – made the final. That they did has given the competition the credibility it craved when cooked up quickly to salvage this imperilled summer.

Exactly a year ago tomorrow, they met in a title decider. Even a turning Taunton track and Somerset’s second innings forfeit was not enough to bring a result, and Essex took their second title in three years. Teams talk about building a dynasty, but most – like Middlesex and Surrey after their recent titles – fall away. Victory here would cement this as a golden Essex era.

Somerset, somehow, remain one of just three counties to never have won the Championship title, but they have come mighty close: they have finished second in three of the last four seasons. To win the Bob Willis Trophy would not end the drought, but it would provide evidence of their recent excellence.

These are teams who do things the right way. A local core is supplemented by high-class outsiders who, notably in Essex’s case with Ryan ten Doeschate and Simon Harmer, stay for years.

Somerset’s production line is currently so prolific that they are unable to play them all enough to keep them. Dom Bess, blocked by Jack Leach, and Jamie Overton have followed Jos Buttler a few years ago in heading for pastures new in search of greater opportunity.

Both teams won four matches in the competition and probably would have taken the fifth were it not for rain.

For both sides, the four key bowlers are all averaging under 20. Somerset’s seam attack, led by Craig Overton, might just have the edge, even over Jamie Porter and Sam Cook, for its relentlessness, but Essex’s batting has a bit more pedigree (especially as James Hildreth is injured). Alastair Cook helps in that department, and no doubt Tom Lammonby – the 20-year-old left-handed Somerset opener who has scored two unbeaten centuries in the tournament – will be looking to pick his brains at some stage.

Many chuckled when the Championship’s substitute was named after the great fast bowler, who died in December, who had a complicated relationship with county cricket. But the Bob Willis Trophy has been a great success, and might just have given a peak at a conference-led future for the county game.

The final – which will be streamed on the ECB and Sky’s websites – has been partnered by Prostate Cancer UK (the disease which Willis suffered from), with fans able to donate. His brother David and wife Lauren will be in attendance, and she will present the trophy, which she helped design, this weekend.

Now, we should get a fitting final to a fine competition.