sport news RICHARD GIBSON: Blast takes on extra importance this year as players eye ... trends now

Alterations to the Hundred drafting rules makes this summer’s Vitality Blast - launching with an inaugural Edgbaston double header next week - more important for players at the smaller clubs than ever.

The third year of the ECB’s 100-ball competition will feature two wildcard selections per team, doubling the number of players who will be selected on the strength of their domestic Twenty20 performances from eight to 16.

This will be particularly relevant for clubs who do not host Hundred cricket like Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, who despite winning a quarter of English cricket’s 20 Twenty20 titles between them, have just three players selected thus far - Callum Parkinson, Rehan Ahmed and David Willey.

Increasing the number of £30,000 deals available on the eve of the August tournament should also avoid the most in-form short-form cricketers being snubbed. Last year, Middlesex’s Stevie Eskinazi was controversially overlooked despite England Lions recognition as the leading run scorer in the Blast between 2020-2022.

Other counties with low representation in the 2023 Hundred squads include Glamorgan, who are currently set to lose only Dan Douthwaite despite winning the Royal London Cup two years ago, and Kent, the 2021 Blast champions, who will pass on a trio of England selections of recent times in Zak Crawley, Sam Billings and Jordan Cox.

Gloucestershire and Middlesex have only two representatives apiece while Derbyshire and Worcestershire have three each.

Meanwhile, the collective tally of the five biggest clubs in the country, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Warwickshire and Yorkshire is already at 38 - evidence that Hundred teams tend to pick players from Test ground counties.

Such is his importance to Hampshire that Keith Barker is contemplating a return to first-class action despite nursing a fractured finger on one hand and a broken knuckle on the other.

Barker has spent the past three weeks agonisingly poised on 499 first-class wickets after incurring the damage in Hampshire’s defeat to Surrey, but could pursue victim number 500 in the two rounds before the LV= County Championship’s fortnight-long hiatus at the start of the Blast.

Despite now being 36, the former England youth international footballer remains one of the most competitive players on the county circuit and was an ever-present last year as Hampshire challenged Surrey for the title before a late-season fade.

Crucially, his absence from the two most recent Division One fixtures split up the seam triumvirate he forms with Pakistan’s Mohammad Abbas and South African Kyle Abbott, and Hampshire were out-bowled by Warwickshire last week - resulting in a crushing home defeat that their coach Adrian Birrell suggested had ended realistic hopes of claiming the Championship pennant despite being only 14 points off top with 10 matches to go.

‘The reality of the season is that we have played four and won two and lost two. The hope is that there are very strong teams and they beat each other, but in a usual season if you lose two games then you don't win the Championship,’ Birrell said.

Concern for Barker

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