Another fine performance from Steven Finn in England colours consolidated his lead at the top of our table of county players to watch this season. For the second successive match, Finn took a five for as England eased to a 2-0 series victory.
Regular visitors to this site will know that just before the start of the county season, we named our dozen players to watch (see Part 1 and Part 2 here). We thought it would be fun to see how the 12 fare over the 2010 season, so devised what is probably a flawed points system to help assess their progress. We recently extended this list to 16, adding Andrew Gale, Chris Woakes, James Hildreth and Ben Stokes to the mix.
Elsewhere, Alex Hales impressed again with a quickfire 95 at the top of the order in Notts draw with Kent whilst James Hildreth continued his rich vein of form with another fifty in Somerset's defeat of Warwickshire. The others of our 16 to shine were Ravi Bopara, who scored 61 to help steer Essex out of a hole against Hampshire and James Taylor, who followed up his double hundred against Middlesex with 63 as Leicestershire beat troubled Surrey by an innings.
The championship now takes a break until the end of June as the Friends Provident T20 takes over. As a purist we don't like to see what should be the centrepiece of the domestic game taken over by the hit and giggle of Twenty20, but money talks and it seems that the counties are as greedy as the next man in the street.
| Player | County | Played | Points | Points awarded* | ||
| Finn | Middlesex | 7 | 129 | County Appearance | 5 | |
| Hildreth | Somerset | 8 | 90 | Lions Appearance | 10 | |
| Rashid | Yorkshire | 8 | 89 | Test appearance | 20 | |
| Taylor | Leics | 9 | 86 | T20I/ODI appearance | 3 | |
| Gale | Yorkshire | 8 | 85 | Score of 40-49 | 3 | |
| Woakes | Warks | 8 | 74 | 50-99 | 5 | |
| Kieswetter | Somerset | 11 | 70 | 100-199 | 10 | |
| Stokes | Durham | 7 | 68 | 200+ | 20 | |
| Hamilton-Brown | Surrey | 8 | 65 | 3 wickets in an innings | 3 | |
| Panesar | Sussex | 8 | 56 | 4 wickets | 5 | |
| Northeast | Kent | 8 | 55 | 5 or 6 wickets | 10 | |
| Bopara | Essex | 5 | 48 | 7wickets+ | 20 | |
| Hales | Notts | 3 | 32 | Catches | 1 | |
| Tremlett | Surrey | 4 | 28 | Stumpings | 3 | |
| Wainwright | Yorkshire | 4 | 24 | |||
| Borthwick | Durham | 4 | 22 |
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