The following eleven punters played the County Championship 2006 prediction game:

¨      Howard Moon

¨      Ay Kay

¨      Janet Davis

¨      Ged Ladd

¨      Bubblesdog

¨      Barmy Kev

¨      Chris Thomas

¨      Dingy Bags

¨      Ned Harding

¨      Hippity the Green Bunny

¨      Key B

In addition, we tracked the following by way of benchmarks:

¨      Wisden (many written journalists predictions pooled)

¨      Sky Sports (many TV journalists predictions pooled)

¨      Poll of Polls (MTWD’s 11 entries predictions pooled).

It was close folks, mighty close.

As you can see, the Wisden folks did best, but not by much.   Our own poll of polls was only two points shy of their score (i.e. only one place) and significantly ahead of the Sky team and any individual predictions. 

The best individual prediction was by Chris Thomas.  Many congratulations to him.  Chris, if you e-mail me your address I shall send you your small prize.  Please don’t get overexcited, but it might help you to erase some of the bad memories of a dreadful season for Middlesex.

As for the losers, I suppose we must name and shame Ned Harding who came rock bottom.  But I suppose given that he is based in Australia he might be forgiven for getting his predictions upside down.

But in the pot, kettle and black department  I can surely place myself and Barmy Kev, who both came joint second-bottom along with Hippity the Green Bunny.  Shame.

If anyone wants to see the spreadsheet model that includes all the predictions and the formulae for computing the winners, you are very welcome to do so.  It bears more than a passing resemblance to the model I use for the Middlesex Averages Prediction Game.  Please e-mail me at gedladd@hotmail.co.uk and I’ll e-mail you the spreadsheet.

Results from the Middlesex Averages Prediction game will go up as soon as I can find a smidge more time to faff around with numbers in Excel.