Beware Ramps

Over Easter I was chatting with a couple of members of my family about the prospects for the County Championship Division Two season (my Dad follows Derbyshire, you see). We didn't come to many firm conclusions but I do remember suggesting that Surrey would win it and 'Ramprakash will make millions of runs'.

That was obviously an exaggeration, but I knew that Mark Ramprakash would lay waste to the division's bowlers. And he has. The latest instalment was a career-best 301 not out against Northants at The Oval, an innings which, to me, had a remarkable inevitability about it. He was dismissed on 292 against Gloucestershire early in the season, but I was virtually certain, after he ended the first day on 174, that he'd make 300 this time.

It must be difficult at times, being Mark Ramprakash. To know that for much of the nineties you were one of the best batsmen in the whole world, but that you never managed to prove yourself properly at the highest level of the game, so you've been left to pile up runs against bowlers barely fit to lace your boots. But the runs still have to be made, and, whenever you hear him interviewed, he seems to have reconciled himself with the vicissitudes of his past.

And he's not alone, either in terms of past experiences or the quality of his batting. Down in Southampton John Crawley also continues to pile up runs like there's no tomorrow.

It must be difficult at times, being a county bowler.