The Spin | County Championship 2025 awards: the final word o...

A memorable County Championship finished in the most dramatic fashion, with Durham falling down the stairs and losing all their clothes while crashing out of Division One on the final day of the season. The Spin has picked her jaw off the ground, and dusted down the awards for a summer to remember.

The Richard III car park award for achievement

It was a bumper year for the unfancied East Midlands. Nottinghamshire knocked Surrey off their gilded throne in Division One, and Leicestershire dominated Division Two, promoted with time to spare. Neither county had been on anyone’s lips in April, in fact both had recently been bywords for slumming it. It was as recently as May 2021 that Notts ended a streak of 1,043 days without a Championship win; while Leicestershire were stuck in Division Two for 22 years, with eight wooden spoons festering at the back of the trophy cabinet. Yet at Trent Bridge and Grace Road, both charming grounds in their own way, captains Haseeb Hameed and Peter Handscomb quietly build teams that worked together and won together.

The sourdough starter award for a jaw-dropping entrance

To Tom Banton, whose pinch-yourself 371 against Worcestershire in the first match of the season, jetpacked him past Harold Gimblett, Viv Richards and Justin Langer to the highest Championship score in Somerset history. It was a moment to remember for a cricketer who admitted he had come to “hate” the game. If he only made 298 runs more in his other 16 first-class innings, consolation came in the Hundred and in his selection for England’s winter white-ball squads.

The Andy Burnham scene-stealing award

To big, smiling, Josh Tongue, who spent the whole of a desperate 2024 out with injury. During the penultimate round of the Championship, at the big-beast knockout of the season at the Oval, Haseeb Hameed switched Tongue to the pavilion end with Surrey needing just 46 more runs to win. Pounding in at over 90mph, bowling full of venom, he grabbed two Surrey wickets in one over and Notts went on to win by 20 runs. Tongue finished with five in the innings and 31 in a six-game season. Notts may never have him as on-hand again, and he made it count.

The Sliding Doors award for unfortunate injury

To Jordan Cox, who for the second time, missed out on possible Test selection after his body let him down. After breaking his thumb in the nets last November before he was about to make his Test debut against New Zealand, he then pulled an abdominal muscle against Somerset, while running his 99th run, and had to withdraw from the England squad to play Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, rival Jacob Bethell made his first international hundred and was appointed England captain for the tour of Ireland.

The Red Roses award for attendance

Come on, it wouldn’t be an awards ceremony if Surrey didn’t win something. The Championship wasn’t to be theirs this year –and the disappointment could be seen in technicolour all over Gareth Batty’s face when he spoke to the media – but the club once again flew the flag for the red-ball game. A 21st-century record of more than 80,000 people walked through the gates to watch Championship cricket, including 14,982 for the Festival of Red Ball cricket match against Essex. For all their many advantages of location and wealth, Surrey do the CC proud.

The Jamie Porter award for slipping under the radar

Spare a thought for Saif Zaib, who had the season of his life for Northamptonshire, but – somehow – still didn’t make the England Lions squad to tour Australia. He finished the season the highest run scorer in either division, with six centuries and seven half-centuries adding up to 1,425 runs, almost double the number of any of his teammates, and batted like an angel. May his winter gigs be fruitful.

The Keir Starmer award for progress

Lancashire and Kent, relegated at the end of the 2024 season, were favourites to hop straight back up again, Lancashire with all the might of a Test-match county, Kent under the guidance of new coach Adam Hollioake. It just didn’t turn out that way. Lancashire had lost captain Keaton Jennings and coach Dale Benkenstein by the end of May, the only team in the entire two divisions not to have won a match. Things were even worse for injury-plagued Kent, whose season nosedived and they ended up marooned at the bottom of the table, 29 points behind seventh place Northamptonshire. Roll on 2026.

The Luke Littler award for youthful endeavour

Take your pick from a fruitful basket. Somerset’s James Rew became the youngest man since Denis Compton to make 10 first-class hundreds. Hampshire’s Sonny Baker had the speed lovers purring. Glamorgan’s 21-year-old pairing of allrounder Ben Kellaway, purveyor of right arm and left arm off-spin, and batter Asa Tribe, were vital to Glamorgan’s promotion to Division Two. But the prize goes to Leicestershire’s Rehan Ahmed, still only 21, who made five delicious centuries, took 21 wickets at 19 and became the first England player since Ian Botham to grab a hundred and 13 wickets in the same game. All will travel to Australia with the Lions.

The HS2 award for decision-making

Has to go to the latest attempt to restructure the Championship. This perennial fun dragged on and on all summer, with various solutions concocted and dismissed, leaks and whispers, the PCA pitted against the counties. Those involved finally came up with something to put to the vote, a convoluted scheme that needed a three-paragraph explainer, and that only knocked one game – and, when the two additional One-Day Cup sweeteners had been added – two days off the schedule. The vote was tied 9-9, well short of the two-thirds majority needed. A furious PCA refused to rule out strikes, plotting restarted and the whole merry-go-round turned again.

Quote of the week

“We can only thank Yorkshire for what they have done. At 11 o’clock today, we were dead and buried and looking at Division Two” – Hampshire’s Liam Dawson after his team’s unlikely reprieve from the drop thanks to Durham’s capitulation at Headingley on the final day of the season.

Memory lane

Despite Australia holding a 3-1 advantage going into the final Test of the 2001 Ashes, Justin Langer had scored just 200 runs by the time he took to the crease at the Oval, a miserable total owing in part to occasionally losing his place to Damien Martyn, a move that had hurt the Perth native deeply. And despite being bonked on the head an Andy Caddick bouncer in the first innings, Langer battled to his eighth Test century before retiring hurt on 102, immediately departing the south London ground for a scan at the nearest hospital. “He walked to the car,” the Australian media man informed the press. “First Aussie to walk this summer,” commented someone drily as a retort. Australia romped to an easy win and 4-1 series victory, and Langer was never dropped again. Prior to that century, Langer had scored seven centuries in 41 matches at an average of 39.04, after which he averaged 52.38 and scored 14 centuries in 44 matches, hitting 250 against England at the MCG in the following 2002-03 Ashes and top scoring for the Australians in their unsuccessful 2005 series.

Still want more?

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Jos Buttler tells Donald McRae that “a big burden’s been lifted” post-captaincy and that he did not feel he was the same after England’s struggles at the 2023 World Cup.

Raf Nicholson turns her attention to the off-pitch turmoil as the World Cup returns to India.

Farewell the Wizard: Ali Martin’s verdict on Chris Woakes’s career after the fast bowler announced his international retirement.

Gary Naylor on the joy for Nottinghamshire and Hampshire, heartache for Durham and soul-searching for Lancashire and Kent.

“A proper gent”: people share their memories of cricket umpire Dickie Bird.