With the launch of the Friends Life t20 on June 1 – and from a meteorological point of view, the start of the summer months – the eighteen counties now take a break from action in the LV= County Championship. The four-day competition resumes in earnest in mid-July, although a few games are sandwiched in between some of the zonal contests in the Twenty20 schedule.
Players and supporters alike will be hoping that the second part of the Championship season is as dry as the first with overall just 5.7% of maximum playing time lost in this season’s County Championship matches since the competition began back in early April. This coincided with the driest spring since 1893, with national rainfall totals between March 1 and May 31 down by around 60% on the expected amount.
According to the Met Office, it was also the warmest spring since records began in 1659 and with mild, dry weather aplenty the “Rain Stops Play” signs around the county grounds have been kept in mothballs, with just four entire days – all at the end of May – when no play whatsoever has been possible.
The table below shows the minimal weather breakdown for each county (as at June 1, 2011):
| Division One | % of playing time lost | Division Two | % of playing time lost | |
| Durham | 4.82 | Derbyshire | 8.18 | |
| Hampshire | 4.69 | Essex | 7.42 | |
| Lancashire | 3.72 | Glamorgan | 7.81 | |
| Nottinghamshire | 7.29 | Gloucestershire | 8.93 | |
| Somerset | 3.57 | Kent | 4.91 | |
| Sussex | 4.17 | Leicestershire | 5.65 | |
| Warwickshire | 6.40 | Middlesex | 6.77 | |
| Worcestershire | 5.50 | Northamptonshire | 7.14 | |
| Yorkshire | 6.25 | Surrey | 6.40 |
