The County Championship returned under splendid spring sunshine on Friday and all it took was a quick glance around the grounds — or a scroll through social media and the Guardian’s live blog — to challenge the notion of a competition struggling for relevance.
It may have been pushed to the bookends of summer, and be due for its umpteenth review in the coming months, but in some ways the Championship feels more important than ever. As private money reshapes the sport, accelerating the rise of a dystopian year-round T20 circuit, it remains a vital touchstone: 135 years of unrivalled history and heritage that has only ever paused for two world wars and a pandemic.
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Before Zak Crawley heard the stumplosion behind him at Northampton, and Yorkshire collapsed at Hampshire on their first day under Jonny Bairstow’s leadership, that history felt very much embodied by one man at Edgbaston. As well as welcoming their first round opponents, Sussex, who closed on 386-5, Warwickshire were saying farewell to their cricket operations manager, Keith Cook, after nearly 52 years of service.
Cook first walked through the gates here in 1973 as a fresh-faced 17-year-old after deciding, shrewdly, that office junior at Edgbaston sounded more fun than the vacancies at the local gas board and law courts. Before this final day at the club, he wondered whether a couple of folks from the back office might pop outside to wish him well.
Instead, as Cook walked out to conduct the toss – something which required special dispensation from the suits at Lord’s and prompted chuckles from the captains when his use of a one-euro coin left them wondering which side was in fact heads – he was warmly applauded by a crowd that was already in the hundreds.
There were famous Bears from yesteryear among them – Dennis Amiss, Gladstone Small and Jeetan Patel to name a few – and a lengthy guard of honour from the current squad. Members later gathered in the pavilion during the lunch interval for a special Q&A, with a good few eyes in the room misting up as Cook relived his time at the club.
For everyone bar Cook himself, these scenes were not exactly a surprise. The word “legend” is overused in sport but speak to anyone connected with Warwickshire about him and it almost always pops up. Over the years – years that have coincided with five County Championship titles, 11 in limited overs cricket, plus a total rebuild of the ground – Cook has been Mr Fix-it for countless players; the go-to man with the can-do attitude.
Sam Hain, for instance, calls Cook his “English dad” and for good reason: 12 years ago, Cook picked up a wide-eyed, board-shorts-wearing Aussie kid at Heathrow in the middle of February and has been sorting out his off-field life ever since. Washing machine, boiler — you name it, Cook has pretty much arranged it.
For Chris Woakes, as solid a judge of character as any, Cook is simply “one of the great men,” someone who “deals with the human being, not the cricketer.” Woakes saw this first-hand early on when, as an academy player entitled to very little, he crashed his old Corsa on the way to the ground and Cook swiftly arranged a replacement.
“There is no one way of summing it all up,” said Cook, slightly taken aback by the fuss and a deluge of messages from around the country and overseas. “It is about belonging to something that is bigger than any individual. It is what the badge stands for. You see the people here today, like our old groundsman, Steve Rouse, who has popped in to say hello, and they just get it. They still feel part of something.”
In terms of the future, Cook admits that the sense of belonging to one entity – the “Once a Bear, always a Bear mantra” here at Edgbaston – may well change. “I think it will be a challenge,” he said. “Players are now thinking about their careers in white-ball cricket, the franchises, and you maybe don’t have that same connection. I will be sad if that is lost.”
As more money than ever before flows into English domestic cricket following the sale of the Hundred teams, the hope is that this sense of belonging remains; that the sport’s new overlords remember it is as much about people as it is a return on investment.
