Ollie Price batted 80 overs to save the game for Gloucestershire against Yorkshire which was a great effort and shows his promise. Top quality players like Alex Davies at Warwickshire and Jordan Cox at Essex shone through in the last round. Surrey had a good go at chasing down more than 200 on day four against Somerset. It has been a different style of cricket and I know some have found it a hard watch at times but I’m sure we would have had a couple of results had the weather not intervened.

In fact, the type of cricket has been reminiscent of Test cricket in Australia: the new ball doing a bit but then it flattening out. I have watched a lot of county cricket on the online streams over the past two weeks and it has been a good product. Games have lasted four days and that normally only happens this time of year if it rains. The lowest total in the last round was 198. A year ago that probably won you a game or was a middling score.

It has not been a case of win the toss, win the game. Over the last few years teams have celebrated good wins but when you look down the scorecard you saw a lad won the game for them with 65 off 80 balls. That is no good for Test cricket. What I have seen over the past couple of weeks is batsmen batting a long time and training their brains to do it at the highest level which is what English cricket needs.

One thing that has surprised me is not many teams played Bazball. When I think back to last year, Notts, for example, set up a game or two with bold declarations. With conditions as they have been, I wanted to see more positive declarations from captains and opportunities to set games up on the last day. But teams now get eight points rather than five for a draw so the motivation is not there. It is at odds with how England play. I can imagine Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum scratching their heads at nine draws but they will be pleased that bowlers are learning they need pace to compete at the top and batsmen to play long innings and be ruthless when they get in, rather than worrying about a ball being out there with their name on it.