Ball one: Jonny be good, then bad, then good …
If you were asked which recent England player had delivered these results – lost by five wickets, won by 504 runs, drawn, lost by five wickets – you would guess Jonny Bairstow, wouldn’t you?
When a captain stamps his personality on his team, it’s a good thing and it probably matters more in first-class cricket than in any other sport. Bairstow is a mercurial talent, as devastating a batter as any in the world on his day. But he can also look like a No 9 with a gate the size of the Brandenburg Gate. Sometimes within the same over.
He could call upon five Test players to stock his top six, but Warwickshire – whose sole international was the thrice-capped Australian all-rounder Beau Webster – cruised home at Headingley well inside three days on Sunday. Ethan Bamber continued his impressive start to life as a Bear with nine wickets to lift his side to second place in Division One. Yorkshire, who were streaky last season even without the mercurial Bairstow in charge, need to find some consistency soon, as they are second bottom.
Ball two: Rew to hop on plane to Australia?
Somerset enjoyed a remarkable win at Taunton, twice rising from the canvas to knock out Essex, the final blow a haymaker of a six from Craig Overton. That spectacular denouement looked a long way off when the normally raucous home crowd found themselves looking at a scoreboard that had their team 313 in arrears with five wickets still to take before the chase could begin. That their centurion, Jordan Cox, had retired hurt was about the only cloud on Essex’s horizon, particularly with Somerset’s brittle top order batting last. Cue five wickets for seven runs, Migael Pretorius and Jack Leach scything through batters like Old Father Time after a long scratch at the whetstone.
A target of 321 looked tough but gettable, but that changed to very tough and barely gettable after skipper Lewis Gregory again watched his top five walk out and walk back in short order. Taking guard at 78 for five, with the game very much there for Essex again, he rolled up his sleeves and saw a 21-year-old 21 yards away.
But James Rew is no ordinary lad making his way on the county circuit. He had already demonstrated the technique, talent and temperament to notch nine first-class centuries and he composed his 10th, first with his captain (57) and then with the old pro Overton (53no). Many will claim Essex lost the match on a toothless fourth morning, but I’m saying the kid won it. England will have to give him his chance soon. Such Brylcreem Boys do not come round often.
Ball three: it’s not the pitch, it’s the rules
Not every match in the County Championship can be a thriller and there’s an argument that not all of them should be – cricket is a game when light and shade must fall if all its narrative possibilities are to be explored. That said, for all that the first-class game has embraced its role as a defender of the One True Faith, it’s never slammed the door in the face of innovation and the tedious draw between Durham and Hampshire made a case for one change this column would like to see.
The match looked alive when the visitors were 82 for four on the first day, but Graham Clark dug in for 160, finding support from Ollie Robinson, George Drissell and Codi Yusuf as Durham piled up more than 500. But the trajectory of the match was pretty much settled once Hampshire, the batting led superbly by Ben Brown’s 162, saved the follow-on.
It would be hard to argue that either captain did anything other than make rational decisions over the four days, but it was a Norwegian Blue of a match for far too long on a flat pitch. Why not limit first innings to 120 overs each way? That’s enough to set up a contest and it would avoid a match suffocating as 149 overs is answered with 155. It wouldn’t even be a real innovation, but a resurrection of an old rule applied in the three-day Championship era.
Ball four: Foxes hunting in packs
Leicestershire went 21 points clear at the top of Division Two with a fine team effort that proved too good for local rivals Northamptonshire. Rishi Patel anchored the first innings with a crucial century, receiving fine support from the late middle order, whose runs ultimately proved the difference. This victory was a team effort though, all six bowlers called upon by Peter Handscomb taking a wicket and Patel’s second-innings duck – an occupational hazard for an opener – compensated by 100 of 175 runs coming after the fall of the sixth wicket.
Ben Sanderson, with nine wickets and 50 runs in a low-scoring affair, can feel a little aggrieved to be on the losing side, as can Harry Conway, who picked up eight wickets of his own. But this strange game of ours is still very much a team game.
Ball five: Hollman sinks Kent
Lord’s exists in a cricketing microclimate where the usual ways of thinking about conditions are reversed. The pitch, regardless of its hue, its position on the slope or its age, just gets easier and easier to bat on, which makes few scores impossible to chase.
After Daniel Bell-Drummond’s immense nine-hour 223 had improved his side’s first innings of 129 to 473 in the second dig, Kent were favourites. Middlesex had plenty of time to accumulate the 365 runs they required, but they would need to show patience.
Luke Hollman stood up with a maiden first-class ton; Stephen Eskinazi could barely stand up with back spasms but did his bit; and Zafar Gohar and Toby Roland-Jones got it over the line with an unbroken stand of 52. It was a great game of cricket – even if a teenager in India can hit twice as many sixes in an hour as these men hit in four days. Middlesex go third, Kent fourth.
Ball six: Red Rose yet to bloom
Lancashire, who were widely tipped to go straight back up after last year’s relegation, held out for a fourth draw in an underwhelming start to the season. They are yet to engineer a winning position, never mind win. It cannot help the cause to have cycled through 16 players already, with just six ever-presents. Aside from the excellent Marcus Harris and Josh Bohannon, the remaining 14 have contributed just four half-centuries and no bowler has taken more than George Balderson’s eight wickets.
Congratulations go to Gloucestershire, who had much the better of the draw, especially to Ollie Price with 253no and Cameron Bancroft who declared at the start of day four to get on with the main job of taking wickets. The teams are in mid-table, but the greater problems are with Keaton Jennings and Dale Benkenstein.
This article is from The 99.94 Cricket Blog