Three-time champions Surrey offer blueprint for success in county cricket in the 21st century | County Championship

TThere’s still a page or two to go in the cricket season, three final one-day internationals between England and Australia, and the end of the County Championship, which finishes this weekend. It must all end at stumps next Sunday, eight days on the autumnal side of the equinox, although it’s questionable whether the weather will permit.

The story of the year includes three Test matches against a West Indies team that performed slightly worse than expected, and three matches against a Sri Lankan team that performed slightly better, four convincing victories in a short space of time, one match at Old Trafford that looked set to be a close one, and the only defeat by eight wickets at the Oval.

You may have missed it, but the best red-ball cricket played in England this year wasn’t at Lord’s, Edgbaston, Trent Bridge or any of the Test venues, but at the County Ground in Taunton when Somerset beat Surrey the week before. These days, the Championship is the background music to the English season, and sometimes the volume is turned up so low that people barely notice it’s on. But this match was worth watching, and Somerset’s live stream attracted more than 750,000 viewers over the four days, a bigger audience than many matches shown live on subscription television.

It had all the twists, tension, snap and crackle of a great Test. Somerset, second in the table and chasing their first ever championship title, defeated league leaders Surrey in the final hour of play. Jack Leach and Archie Vaughan took seven wickets for 14 in 18 overs between them, and Somerset won with five minutes to go. It was the kind of cricket that makes you stop what you’re doing.

Vaughan, 18 and fresh out of school, was part of an intriguing cast, with 11 internationals among them; some, like Leach and Ben Foakes, still trying to prove they deserve another chance at international cricket, others, like Rory Burns, have already decided that it is behind them. There was Shakib Al Hasan, playing for Surrey on a one-match deal, Tom Curran having come out of retirement from red-ball cricket especially for the match. He turned the match one way by hitting 86 from No. 7 in the order, until Tom Banton turned it the other way after coming in to bat at No. 11 with a broken ankle when his team’s lead was only 149.

There is more of a rivalry between the two teams than you might think. There were a few on-field incidents a decade or so ago, and as two of the most successful teams on the circuit, they have been battling it out in the leagues in recent years. The city mouse versus country mouse contrast between the clubs is part of that, as are their respective Championship records. Curran, who has been mercilessly thrashed by the Somerset crowd over the years, didn’t need much encouragement to take them on this time around. It seemed that Somerset’s win had set up one of the great climaxes.

It wasn’t. Last week, Surrey made short work of a home game against a Durham team with two teenage fast bowlers, and Somerset made such a mess of their away game against Lancashire that the title was ultimately decided in the early hours of Friday, when they lost their last four wickets before it was time to take the teabag out of the pot. The championship, like the game itself, is designed to come and go. For the players it’s a full-time job, but for everyone else it demands your attention only intermittently.

So Surrey have won their third consecutive title with a week to go. They are the first club to win three in a row since Brian Close’s Yorkshire in the late 1960s. Which is fitting. They are the best-run club in the country.

They have natural advantages that others don’t, but they also know how to make the most of them. And while Lancashire’s chief executive Daniel Gidney complains that England’s players (and their agents) don’t care about the Championship, it was striking how many of Surrey’s white-ball internationals stepped up to the plate when the title was on the line in the final fortnight.

They may not be one of the best championship teams, in fact there are a few older Surrey teams that you would more often than not root for to beat them.

But it seems the club has come closer to understanding how county cricket should function in the 21st century than anyone else.

They are part professional team, part player development centre and part community resource. It is one thing to have money, another to know what to do with it. That is a lesson some people in the provinces will learn the hard way when next year’s windfall from private investment in the Hundred rolls in.