With the Covid-19 pandemic having forced all mass gatherings to be abandoned, there has been much debate over the fate of this summer’s county cricket schedule.

While it seems inevitable that the start of the season, currently set for April 12, will be postponed, and isn’t out of the question that the whole campaign might be canned, one solution at some point could be to play games behind closed doors to minimise the risk of infection spreading.

If we have to play behind closed doors I’m gona miss the old boy on the top tier telling me how crap I am and 10 minutes later asking me to sign a picture of Graeme Swann

— Chris Nash (@chrisnash23) March 19, 2020

County cricketers are having to come to terms with what it would mean to play in front of completely empty stadiums, and Nottinghamshire’s Chris Nash feels the experience just wouldn’t be the same.

Great idea, if we can get clips of ‘rubbish’ ‘retire’ ‘hit it’ ‘oh no not Nash’ ‘use your bat’ and an ironic ‘cheer’ for any boundary hit or Yorker bowled that would suffice

— Chris Nash (@chrisnash23) March 19, 2020

“If we have to play behind closed doors I’m gonna[sic] miss the old boy on the top tier telling me how crap I am and 10 minutes later asking me to sign a picture of Graeme Swann,” he tweeted, before coming up with suggestions of volleys from the crowd that could be recorded beforehand and played over the PA system at appropriate moments: “If we can get clips of ‘rubbish’, ‘retire’, ‘hit it’, ‘oh no not Nash’, ‘use your bat’ and an ironic ‘cheer’ for any boundary hit or yorker bowled that would suffice.”