THE Kenyon Award honours the player who has put in the finest first-class performance in a situation where his contribution has enabled Worcestershire to go on to win the match.

This is an extract from the County’s official website for the requirement of scooping the award — well that was until this season.

Without a first-class win throughout the 2009 campaign, that includes the game against Oxford UCCE, the County still managed to handed this gong out.

How you might ask? Well it was simple they just didn’t mention the word ‘win’.

Yes, Daryl Mitchell’s career-defining 298 at Somerset did deserve some sort of recognition at the end of the season awards, but not the Kenyon Award — this should not have been awarded at all.

It would have been far more honourable of the club to say: “We haven’t won a first-class match this season, so we cannot make the award.”

Maybe it says something about the mentality at the County this past year that they made such an error.

Before the defeat to Somerset Sabres, which ended all hope of winning the NatWest Pro40 title, the club were claiming that success in the now defunct 40-over league would have made up for the disappointment elsewhere.

You cannot go through a season without winning a first-class match, be embarassed by Ireland in the Friends Provident Trophy and slump in the Twenty20 Cup and expect your members and supporters to forget that if the Pro40 had been won.

Sussex were relegated with the County this year and their professional cricket manager Mark Robinson, who guided his side to Twenty20 Cup glory and the Pro40 crown, said that the drop outweighed their success — perhaps a lesson can be learnt here?