The Guardian's Andy Wilson on Lancashire's long-awaited triumph in the county Championship.

The pennant will now be hung somewhere at Old Trafford for the first time having been introduced in 1951, the year after Lancashire shared the title with Surrey. Since their last outright win, as some in Yorkshire have pointed out, the Old Trafford pavilion has been bombed by the Luftwaffe. Generations of fine Lancastrian cricketers, from Roy Tattersall to David Hughes, Jack Bond to Andrew Flintoff, have played their whole careers without winning a championship. Imports such as Ken Grieves, Farokh Engineer, Clive Lloyd, Wasim Akram and Muttiah Muralitharan helped to secure plenty of Lord's finals and one-day trophies, but never the prize most coveted by all county cricketers.

Former Lancashire player Jack Simmons gives us his take on the victory in the Daily Telegraph.

Michael Vaughan, writing in the same paper, says the county game may have its flaws but it is still the best domestic structure in world cricket.

The BBC's Alison Mitchell was at the first day-night first-class match in England, between Kent and Glamorgan in Canterbury, and got the reactions of players, coaches and fans on the experiment with the pink ball.

As it turned out, the stitching on the ball split early on in the match and the players just had to get on with it; far from ideal in a First Class match, albeit one which has no bearing on Division Two promotion. The performance of the ball got mixed reactions.

England overwhelming their opponents has been admirable but not as exciting as the domestic scene, writes Vic Marks in the Observer.

With the international summer of cricket, where a strange pattern was soon established: England turn up and overwhelm their opponents. Which has been admirable but seldom gripping.

But domestically we are constantly surprised. The devotees can cast an eye at the next round of fixtures, which start on Wednesday and in Division One there is not a "dead" game to be found. There will be no late-season blooding of youngsters just for the sake of it. Instead there will be late fitness tests in the hope that some old stalwart can drag his body out one more time in the last-ditch pursuit of glory or survival. There are no end-of-season parties in July in Division One.

Philip Robinson, in the Daily Mail, laments the sorry state of County cricket, which is strapped for cash and struggling with poor attendances.

Even with cost-cutting measures, Kent still loses about £500,000 a year. After it reduced the wage bill from £1.4 million per annum six players left, including fast bowler Amjad Khan. Radio Kent no longer broadcasts a live commentary from the ground, and the lime tree that lived inside the boundary in one corner of the pitch has died from heart rot. If this club were a dog, it would be on its last trip to the vet.

With the Friends life T20 tournament starting in England on June 1, Will Hawkes analyses why audiences were at a low last year, in the Independent. The two big problems for England's domestic Twenty20 tournament, he says, is that it will always be second to the Indian Premier League and it is not taken seriously enough by the ECB.

India's flagship event may have had a difficult year but it is undeniably the blue riband of Twenty20 tournaments. It has the crowds (albeit diminished in 2011), the big names and, most importantly, the money. Many of those young cricketers who do well in this year's Friends Life T20 will be dreaming, perhaps above all, of an IPL contract.

In the Daily Telegraph, Steve James suggests the problems may go beyond that and that perhaps fans have started to find the format boring and predictable.

Of course, Twenty20 can be exciting, but it remains a shallow game that has become more formulaic with time. I was watching one Twenty20 match with a current player last season, and before every ball of one over, by just observing the field positioning, he called correctly the ball that was to be bowled and the shot that was to be played in response. “It’s boring,” he said.

Paul Newman speaks to Surrey's Richard Thompson, who, at 43, is the youngest chairman in county history. Read the interview in the Daily Mail.

Thompson certainly has a challenge on his hands. He runs a media rights and talent management company called Merlin Elite but he has no magic wand as he attempts to awaken the sleeping giant that is Surrey. They are the biggest and wealthiest of all counties but are without a trophy in eight years and are languishing in the second division of the Championship. Crucially, they have not produced an England Test player since Mark Butcher.