Somerset hoping to finally lay the ‘curse of the committee’ to rest
Only Essex stand in way of Taunton side claiming their first championship title, writes Simon Briggs
Somerset: the cliffhanger county. For the third time in a decade, Tom Abell’s team will enter the final round of County Championship matches in search of domestic cricket’s biggest prize. Beat Essex comprehensively, on their home ground of Taunton, and they will win their maiden first-class title.
On the face of things, it is surprising that Somerset have never lifted the Championship before. You would have thought that their mighty 1980s outfit – which was built around the three-headed hydra of Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Joel Garner – must have got there at some point.
But those cricketing galacticos were better suited to the eight-hour spotlight of a Lord’s final than the Championship’s six-month trudge. Which is why Keith Fletcher’s Essex – underpinned by the more pragmatic genius of Graham Gooch – dominated the era.
This year’s Somerset might not offer the same star power as the 1980s batch. The most recognisable name probably belongs to Jack Leach, the slow left-armer who admits that “I look like a village cricketer out there in my glasses [and] bald head”. Nevertheless, much anticipation surrounds their pursuit of the trophy that narrowly eluded Marcus Trescothick’s team in 2010, as well as Chris Rogers’s in 2016.
“The atmosphere around the town is amazing,” said Roy Kerslake, 76, who has served Somerset as player, captain, chairman and president. “We’re expecting plenty of Essex fans on Monday, so it could well be a full house.”
The 2016 finale was the most frustrating. Three teams entered the final week with a shot. Unfortunately the other two – Middlesex and Yorkshire – happened to be playing each other, and they contrived a result. Poor Somerset were left feeling like provincial gooseberries, scoring a futile victory at Taunton while the title was decided at Lord’s.
Somerset are not the only county to be absent from the Championship’s honour roll. They share that distinction with Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire. But while the other two have bobbed around in the Second Division of late, casualties of a system that favours Test-match grounds, Somerset keep fighting the odds, and keep falling at the final hurdle.
Their recent sequence of near-misses brings to mind other famous sporting hexes, notably the “Curse of the Bambino” that supposedly afflicted the
Boston Red Sox for most of the 20th century, which started when Red
Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe
Ruth – aka “the Bambino” – to the
New York
Yankees in 1919, apparently to fund his own day job as a Broadway impresario. The Red Sox, previously the one of the most successful franchises, promptly embarked on an 84-year dry spell, while the Yankees morphed from nearly men into the biggest team in baseball.
Back in the County Championship, you could argue that the poisonous Somerset break-up of 1986 created a “Curse of the Committee”. In a coup staged by chairman Michael Hill and his ever-contrary captain Peter Roebuck, the club sacked Richards and Garner in favour of New Zealand batsman Martin Crowe. It was an ugly period for the club, as expressed in the placard reading “Judas” that appeared on Roebuck’s dressing-room peg.
By the end of 1986, Botham had defected in protest. Moving to Worcestershire, he catalysed a pair of Championship titles over the next three years. As for Richards, he soon cropped up at Glamorgan, transforming the dressing-room culture to point where they took the title in 1997.
Meanwhile Somerset returned to the wilderness after their brief spell of limited-overs success. When they won the Royal London One-day Cup four months ago, it was just their third piece of silverware in 36 years – a record that only Derbyshire can undercut.
Most neutrals will hope that 2019 continues to buck the long-term trend, for this is a very likeable club. “Being a Somerset fan, you get used to rollercoaster rides every year,” said Kerslake. “My one hope is that the weather doesn’t intervene, because we have to get
that win.”