Women’s County Championship: All To Play For In Div 2

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In Division 2 of the Women’s County Championship, with 2 teams to be promoted to Div 1, and 2 to be relegated to Div 3, there is everything to play for going into the final weekend of fixtures.

Only one team already know where they will play next year – everyone else is in the mix for promotion or relegation, and indeed one side could still be either promoted or relegated!

Team Points Worst[1] Best[2] To Play
Lancashire 14.8 11.8 15.4 Wales
Notts 14.2 11.8 14.8 Worcs
Wales 13.8 11.0 14.6 Lancs
Hampshire 13.0 11.1 13.7 Essex
Devon 10.8 9.3 11.9 Leics
Worcs 9.0 7.5 10.5 Notts
Leics 7.5 6.0 9.6 Devon
Essex 4.5 3.9 6.4 Hants

[1] Worst = The lowest points total possible for this team.
[2] Best = The highest points total possible.

At the bottom of the table, Essex are the one county who already know their fate – the best they can finish on is 6.4, and the worst Worcestershire can get is 7.5, so Essex are relegated whatever.

The key relegation scrap then is between Worcestershire and Leicestershire – they are closer than they look, because Leicestershire have had 2 abandonments to Worcestershire’s one, meaning on average each point is worth more to Leicestershire at this stage, so it might well come down to bonus points between them.

In the promotion battle, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and Wales all have their fate in their own hands. Lancashire and Wales play each other, but it isn’t quite as simple as “winner takes it all” – Wales need to get a bag of bonus points on the board, or they will still be relying on others to slip up.

Meanwhile, Hampshire need to get a win with near-maximum bonus points and hope others don’t; but Hampshire’s advantage is that they play Essex – the only side in the division without a win this season.

The most interesting case is Devon – they could be relegated if they lose badly to Leicestershire, and Worcestershire also get a big win… but they could also theoretically be promoted if lots of other results fall in their favour.

UPDATE: For Devon to be promoted requires them to get 18 at least 17 points, both Lancashire and Nottinghamshire to lose with zero bonus points and Hampshire to lose with 4 or fewer bonus points. (Lancs and Notts both getting zero bonus points is the unlikely bit – they only need to get 75 runs or take 3 wickets for a BP!)

5 thoughts on “Women’s County Championship: All To Play For In Div 2”

  1. Going to display my ignorance here, but how does the points system work? How, for example, can Lancs’ worst case scenario be 11.8 points, when they already have 14.8?

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    • It is an “average points” system – total points, divided by completed games.

      Lancs currently have 59 points from 4 completed games = 59 / 4 = 14.8. If they complete their final game with zero bonus points, they will still have 59 points, but will have completed 5 games = 59 / 5 = 11.8.

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  2. Devon don’t need 18 pts to get promoted, they can achieve it on 17 pts. 17 pts gives them an average of 11.86 and its possible (though unlikely) that Lancs (0pts = 11.80), Notts (0pts = 11.83) and Hants (<=4pts) could end up below them.

    Mr Clark has every right to be confused. For example Lancs are above Notts at the moment. If they both lost and took no bonus points then Notts would go above Lancs. Rather counter intuitive but true. Even stranger maybe is that if Lancs were to lose and get zero points then would definitely not be promoted whereas were Notts to do such a stupid thing they could still be promoted.

    The guaranteed promotion targets are Lancs (10), Notts (12) and Wales (14). The Hants promotion situation is too verbose for this comment, suffice to say, if you are a Hants supporter then get 18 points (although you could be promoted with as few as 5 pts) and hit the Twitter stream.

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