[themaclad]

MATCH REPORT: Somerset match ends in frustrating draw

Lancashire and Somerset played out a draw at Emirates Old Trafford with the visitors opting not to set a target and batting through the day to reach 398 for five, 433 runs ahead, as the final day of this LV= Insurance County Championship match meandered to a frustrating stalemate.

James Rew adding to his burgeoning reputation in making an unbeaten 118, his second century of the match, and becoming the leading run-scorer in Division One of the Championship.

Lancashire eventually rested their front-line attack, throwing the ball to their batters – and wicketkeeper – for the second half of the day before the teams shook hands at 4.50pm.



Starting on 114 for three and ahead by 149 runs, Somerset progressed steadily through the morning session, Tom Lammonby posting a season-best 78 before his failed attempt to launch Tom Hartley towards the new hotel being constructed at midwicket presented George Bell with an easy stumping.

Tom Kohler-Cadmore was the other morning departure for 11 after playing inside a Will Williams delivery that knocked back his off stump.

Rew provided some acceleration, hitting five boundaries off eight deliveries once the visitors lead had passed the 200-mark, with the nineteen-year-old reaching a 92-ball fifty early in the afternoon.

But the game drifted along from that point and just after the halfway stage of the day, with the lead now beyond 300 and no declaration forthcoming, there was the rare sight of Steven Croft and Dane Vilas sharing the second new ball. Josh Bohannon went behind the stumps as wicketkeeper Bell also undertook bowling duties.



For Croft it was a return to seam-up bowling for the first time since the early part of his lengthy career, while Vilas added eleven overs of right-arm medium pace to his previous solitary over in a Red Rose shirt.

That was followed by Bell sending down ten overs of off spin with Lancashire using nine bowlers in a first-class innings for the first time since 2003.

Rew reached his second century of the match just before tea from 196 balls while Kasey Aldridge struck an unbeaten 101 – his maiden first-class century – in a partnership of 192.



But the afternoon’s play seemed to many to be to be a somewhat farcical conclusion to the match from which Lancashire took nine points and Somerset ten.

Lancashire are not in Championship action for a month until they host Hampshire at Southport starting on June 11.

Head coach Glen Chapple was frustrated by the events of the day.

“We came in this morning thinking there was a really good game in prospect,” he said.

“Somerset were 149 in front overnight which in our minds meant that a positive session from them or a good start for us, either way there was a good chance of a game.

“Unfortunately we didn’t make early breakthroughs but we still expected to be set a score.

“It’s a good pitch but scoring quickly wasn’t easy and a good target could have been set to give both teams a chance.



“We’re trying to play positive cricket. Our scoring rates are good, we’ve got the highest run-rate for any batting team in Division One.

“Unfortunately so far with the pitches we’ve played on, and a bit of rain, we’ve not been able to force a result.

“That’s not down to how we’ve played our cricket. We set a really good declaration at Nottingham last week which, credit to Nottinghamshire, they went for it from ball one. We didn’t get over the line, but it was a good game of cricket.

“Today was the opposite. There was a good game in prospect and for some reason Somerset weren’t interested. I’ve got no explanation for that.



“I thought 260-270 from lunch would have been really challenging, but we would have gone for it. We would have even gone for 300, but that would have been a slim chance on that surface.

“They didn’t take any chances in the morning session, they were 250-odd in front and it would have taken very little more intent from them to get a really challenging target.

“The more you dangle the carrot, the more chance both teams have of winning. We would have gone all the way after a reasonable chase.”

[themaclad]

Hampshire @ Southport 11/6/2023 4 days



https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2637343

The gods may be annoyed



So 54 years since I went to Trafalgar Road, I shall rock up on Sunday in the hope of actually seeing some play although looking at the forecast may be unlucky

https://wisden.com/matches/players/10454...ampionship

Rodney Cass was the first County player at a Championship match that I aw score 50 plus, over the years saw Geoff Cook Northants score his first ever 50.
Attended the Sunday League game against Glamorgan, saw the 470 partnership between Humpage and Kallicharan
Also there when Diana got married to jug ears in truth wasn't alone most of the male population of Lancashire was there that day.
Got to know where ex Liverpool players Ronnie Whelan and Alan Hanson live, love the ground can also train spot what more does a bloke want(Don't answer that)
Given the way things are going with the game suspect visits to this great little ground will be limited, shame really proper cricket ground although doing away with the deckchairs on the section were they now have the public announcement van was a heinous crime.

Any news will be plonked on here as and when it arrives

[themaclad]

[themaclad]

It was not until early afternoon on the opening day of this match that bashful sunlight finally replaced stubborn haze but no one except Hampshire's top order seemed put out by the tardiness. Summer arrived in these parts over two weeks ago and with it came the sweet realisation that many first-class cricketers would soon be seen on club or school grounds, much-loved venues that were already being spit and polished for a long-awaited occasion.

Hampshire's collapse to 76 for 7 sharpened the pleasure for Lancashire supporters and Phil Salt's well-judged 76 not out deepened it, but these trombone-triumphs did not only bring happiness to home supporters. The cricket was also appreciated by neutrals from Devon and Gloucestershire, their satisfaction increased by the consonance between season and setting. Such gentle concord was noted nearly a century ago by Neville Cardus, who knew something about harmony.

"When June arrives, cricket grows to splendour like a rich part of the garden in an English summertime," wrote Cardus in Cricket (1930). "In June the game is at the crown of the year; from Little Puddleton to London the fields of village and town are white with players in hot action. Batsmen move along their processional way to centuries at Lord's, while in a hundred hidden hamlets far and wide some crude but not inglorious Hobbs flings his bat at the ball, and either misses it or feels his body tingle as willow thwacks leather."

There was more missing than tingling on this first day and a good dollop of edging, too, as Hampshire's batsmen struggled to cope in that early haze and on a pitch offering little more than lively bounce. Inside the first hour, Fletcha Middleton's ugly prod at a ball from Will Williams had given Salt the first catch of what would be a memorable day for him and Joe Weatherley had driven Tom Bailey to George Bell in the gully.

However, the main hatchway of the visitors' innings did not cave in until the 20-minute spell before lunch that justified Dane Vilas's decision to insert Hampshire. Having batted with his usual circumspection, Nick Gubbins was leg before to Jack Blatherwick for 16, although the batsman was statuesque for several seconds after seeing Neil Mallender's raised finger, an attitude with which one could sympathise. The ball clearly pitched outside leg stump and it was unlikely that Gubbins was admiring the copper beeches behind the umpire's head.

But festering doubts were replaced by simple amazement on the point of luncheon when James Vince was bowled by a classic breakback from Williams, the delivery jagging so far off the seam that the Hampshire skipper's adjustment appeared to widen the gap through which the ball could pass.

Rather than arrest Hampshire's decline, the match's first interval merely postponed it. The normally adhesive and obstinate Ben Brown was cramped for room when attempting to pull a ball from Bailey and skied a catch to Josh Bohannon. Twenty minutes later, Felix Organ and Liam Dawson had also gone and had not Keith Barker shown some discrimination in making 44 off 71 balls, an already bad day for Hampshire would have assumed show-reel status. As it was, Vilas opted to call on the spin of Tom Hartley, a choice that looked dubious when Barker smacked the slow left-armer into the tennis courts but deeply wise next ball when he was bowled trying to clout him towards the balsam poplars and over the railway line.

And there was a fair case that even Barker's selective aggression was a bad portent for the visitors. For one thing, it suggested that conditions were easing; for another it showed that attacking batting might be possible, even against Hampshire's highly-rated new-ball attack. Perhaps Salt noted these things as he adjusted to his first Championship game for nearly 13 months; perhaps he was simply looking forward to opening a red-ball innings for the first time since August 2020, when he was a Sussex cricketer. Either way, what followed in the 35 overs after tea established a dominance that Vince's men will do well to shift and may also have laid the foundations for Lancashire's first victory of a season that has so far featured five draws and a binbag of frustration.

The galling thing for Hampshire was that Salt's calibrated assault on their seam attack might have been ended almost at its birth. For having clipped Barker through wide mid-on for a fine boundary in the first over of the innings, Salt was immediately dropped by Middleton at second slip. As though realising this might be an enjoyable evening, the opener drove the next ball through the covers and the tone of the session was more or less set.

This, though, was no reckless assault, no T20 battering. Salt may have spent much of the last year playing short-form cricket but he clearly still knows how to build an innings against seamers of the quality of Kyle Abbott or Mohammad Abbas. Given the chance to attack, Salt seized it and his approach was followed by his opening partner, George Balderson, who made 51 before being bowled by a fine ball from Dawson that spun back through the left-hander's gate. By then, though, Lancashire were 115 for 1 and some of Hampshire's bowling had been ragged on a day in the dirt for visitors who later admitted they had misread the pitch.


Salt, by contrast, read things perfectly and so did the crowd as they relaxed into the gentle embrace of their evening's cricket. Players like outground matches because it allows them to reconnect with the more innocent game they loved in the summers before they were paid to play cricket. But such pleasure is reciprocal. Spectators watch cricketers when the lads batted in junior games, evening encounters, perhaps, where the encouragement from the sides could be heard in the middle. That support is always present on the outgrounds and it was offered to Williams when he dismissed Middleton. Just over a year ago Williams was playing for Bridgwater at venues comparable to Trafalgar Road in the West of England Premier League and now he is not 12 months into a three-year contract with Lancashire.

And they've travelled for this game, you know, and not only from Petersfield or Basingstoke. There are visitors from Glasgow, if you please, and one club member has taken annual leave from his job in Kuwait, partly because he wants to help out and partly because visiting the cricket club represents his best chance of seeing his family.

Outground cricket attracts folk with no particular allegiance; come July it will be the same as Blackpool and Oakham, Scarborough and Cheltenham. More larks have been heard in England this summer but they share their own exultation at Trafalgar Road when Lancashire visit them. It is on such days that caring very much who wins is barely half the point.

ESPN View

[themaclad]

ESPN View

Here I go out to sea again
The sunshine fills my hair
And dreams hang in the air


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Thus the opening lines of Black's 1987 song "Wonderful Life", whose melody it was tempting to hum during this fine day's cricket at Southport, where Felix Organ's bowling and some grit-and-grind batting in the evening have given Hampshire a chance of avoiding defeat. The spectators made the day memorable, too; indeed they were an integral part of the event as they stood ten deep in front of the Late Cut Bar, drinking for England, talking typewriters and causing no trouble. Other folk ringed this sacred field to watch Phil Salt make a century and if those two thousand or so souls could not relate too closely to the mystical elements in the late Colin Vearncombe's brilliant lyrics, they surely agreed with its overarching sentiment.

The weather helped things along, too. The sun pierced all but the thickest bedroom curtains at seven o'clock and it braised the first spectators as they set up their base camp at the Harrod Drive End two hours later. One was reminded that during one of his state visits to the United Kingdom the Shah of Persia found himself seated next to a lady from Edinburgh. "Tell me, Sire," she began, "they say you worship the sun in your country." "So would you, madam, if you had ever seen it," came the reply. It's debatable whether that story is testament to Dunedinian gloom or the fierceness of the Persian summer but either way, there was no doubting the dominance of the sun at Trafalgar Road.

It shone on Salt and Josh Bohannon as they whippeted between the wickets in their stand of 74, calling each other sharply and responding with an instinctive appreciation of the possible. It powered down on Salt a minute before noon when an inside-edged four off his pad took him to his maiden century for Lancashire and his first in red-ball cricket since May 2019. Then it bestowed the warmest blessing on Organ when the offspinner removed Salt, Dane Vilas and Rob Jones before lunch and cleaned up Lancashire's tail to finish with a career-best 6 for 67 in mid-afternoon.

And yes, the sun also blessed the battalion of volunteers as they willingly strapped themselves in for a second day of caring, catering and clearing up. For this was another day when cricketers and those who love the game receive some recompense for those fuliginous December mornings when daylight seems a useless accessory to a dank world.

The obstacle to Hampshire's appreciation of it all was they began the morning so far behind in the game that even a good first session - four prime wickets for 121 runs - still left them on the jagged edge of things. The Lancashire batter principally responsible for the visitors' plight on the first evening was Salt and his progress to three figures this morning reminded one a little of his maiden red-ball century for Sussex nearly five years ago

Since that golden afternoon at Arundel, Salt has played short-form cricket for - deep breath - Lahore Qalandars, Islamabad United, Barbados Tridents, Adelaide Strikers, Manchester Originals, Dambulla Giants, Pretoria Capitals, Delhi Capitals and, for all I know, Dagenham Girl Pipers' Second Team in the Essex Inclusion League. But what was plain on Sunday evening and again this morning was that Salt's keenness to attack has not spoiled his appreciation of defensive batting when the occasion demands it. Only when Keith Barker tested him outside the off stump did his technique look faulty and if that weakness could be remedied, he could still be a very fine first-class cricketer. Whether or not he has the time and inclination to develop such skills are matters only he can address.


Perhaps a similar challenge was once faced by Daryl Mitchell, who is now ranked the ninth best Test batter in the world. Mitchell revealed his preparedness to take on the bowling when he took 14 runs off his first three balls from Organ and the New Zealander's 68 was principally responsible for ensuring that Lancashire later batters built a first-innings lead of 232.

So much was also very acceptable for most of the crowd at Trafalgar Road but the 40-over evening session belonged to Hampshire's batsmen. Most notably, it belonged to Nick Gubbins, who had been sawn off in the first innings and to Fletcha Middleton, who had made nought and dropped three catches. During the course of one of the latter he deflected the ball into Liam Dawson's mush, causing the slow left-armer to leave the field and go to hospital for stitches in his upper lip.

All of which suggested that Middleton owed his team some runs and his unbroken 95-run alliance with Gubbins reminded one that wonderful days like this are so often gradual affairs in which any advantage is hard won. Lancashire had to be satisfied with the wicket of Joe Weatherley, whose blameless forward defensive nicked a catch to Tom Hartley off Tom Bailey. A few spectators left Trafalgar Road during the subsequent stand but the majority stayed, patiently observing Vilas's rotation of his bowlers, savouring the struggle, watching closely.

[themaclad]

It is just gone half-past twelve at Trafalgar Road and Jack Blatherwick is bowling the 62nd over of Hampshire's second innings to Fletcha Middleton. It is a productive if fortuitous few minutes for the opener, who inside-edges one boundary to fine leg and misdrives another through midwicket. Otherwise, there are two backward defensive strokes, a bouncer that he ducks under and a leave-alone. Middleton is now 76 not out, having reached his third half-century in only his tenth Championship innings. This is his first season on the county circuit, although he knows a bit about it because his father, Tony, was both player and coach at the Rose Bowl. Hampshire are 176 for 2, still 56 runs in arrears. But what else is happening?


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Well, there is a lot of gentle enjoyment at Southport this sun-filled morning. Last night's rain has left the burned outfield a richer brown and a good crowd is watching Hampshire attempt to avoid defeat and maybe set Lancashire a foxy target in the fourth innings. For many thousands of spectators on the ground or logging onto the live stream, this is the cricket they enjoy most. Gulls in the sky and in my blue eyes.

Need there be anything else?

Yes, of course. In the immediate context, Middleton will score only another single before being bowled by one that keeps slightly low from George Balderson. The same bowler has already snared Nick Gubbins leg before wicket for 62 and he will take a third wicket in 23 deliveries when Ben Brown is caught behind for a three-ball nought.

At lunch Hampshire are 210 for 4 and the prospects of a three-day finish increase twenty minutes after the resumption when Liam Dawson is caught behind by Phil Salt off George Bell for 26. Bell normally keeps wicket for Lancashire and social media is seething with rage that he is bowling before Tom Hartley and that Matt Parkinson isn't playing at all. Records suggest Bell has previously taken six wickets in any organised cricket but now Neil Mallender gives him a seventh when he decides that Dawson has nicked the ball to Salt.

The batsman is plainly gobsmacked - for the second time in two days, if you read any second-day reports - and he leaves the field gesticulating to nobody at all. His captain, James Vince, stands aghast. Bell is a little boy in a toyshop. Life gets no kinder to the visitors when Felix Organ is leg before to Will Williams and Keith Barker nicks Tom Bailey to Daryl Mitchell at slip. And it has been clear for some time that Hampshire's hopes of taking this game into a fourth day - or even winning it - rest on Vince, whose straight drives and dreamy pulls are already decorating the afternoon. But why is it that Middleton's batting and Bell's bowling remain on one's mind even as one of the game's most graceful stroke-makers glides towards a century?

To answer that question we might turn to Chris Firth's excellent programme for this match and the following words from John Arlott:

Test cricket's all very well as a spectacle and all that, but I love a county game - you know, perhaps at Glastonbury or Horsham or Neath or Ebbw Vale, where you can hear the players talking to each other…And you feel somehow close to the players. This is where you get a bond with county cricket, and this is where they look so good and so right there.

Arlott was speaking to Mike Brearley in 1986, when far more outgrounds were used but the passing of 37 years has not diminished the impact of his thoughts. The man who had seen Ray Lindwall in his pomp, Tom Graveney in all his splendour and Garry Sobers at his matchless best still preferred the county circuit because of its regional eccentricity, its rich humanity, its consonance between person and place.

That placing of the flower show above the state banquet would perhaps be understood by many of those who have watched their cricket at Southport or Chesterfield this week but we need to be careful here. Arlott mentions the players talking to each other as, indeed, they still do. The encouragement to Bailey and Williams as they sought to make early breakthroughs could be heard quite clearly by the crowd massed at the Harrod Drive End this crystal morning. But they now also talk about each other to a degree one suspects Arlott rarely knew. For example, consider this comment from one Lancashire cricketer to another after Blatherwick had altered his line of attack to Middleton on Monday evening: "I'm not sure why Jack went round, he [Middleton] was shitting himself from over."

Such observations are probably quite familiar to club cricketers; the recreational game has never been the gentle circus some think it. But hearing the words spoken to an opener who was playing his seventh first-class game reinforced the point that while Middleton is a fellow professional, he is also an opponent and an obstacle. If fatal damage to his career is the consequence of dismissing him, so be it. Watching cricket at Southport may be as appealing a suburban pastoral as any in England but remember these men are playing for their careers as well as their teams. In other words, do not forget that county game is bloody tough. The average age at which a professional cricketer retires is 26 and not everybody has stress fractures.


And now it is just gone five o'clock and Vince is progressing with understated grace to what is surely an inevitable century. Hartley has dropped him on 80, a tough chance high to the slip's left, but he is unbeaten on 87 when Daryl Mitchell bowls him a short ball - and he pulls it straight to Josh Bohannon at deep square leg. It has been a lovely innings and, as so often with Vince, a frustrating one.

Within 40 minutes Lancashire's openers are walking out to bat with their side needing 140 to win their first Championship game of the season. A quarter of an hour later both are back in the Trafalgar Road dug-out, Salt having been felicitously caught at slip by Vince off Mohammad Abbas, and Balderson taken by Brown off Barker. On the instant the air at Southport is thick with anxiety and it rings with the encouragement of Hampshire's cricketers.

But no more wickets fall. Bohannon and Vilas will start again in the morning with 98 runs needed and no one is calling the game yet. But as Lancashire edge their way towards their target, Fletcha Middleton will probably be standing in the slips, up straight in the sunshine and wondering what the game will show him in the coming months. The Ashes will be no richer than this.

[themaclad]

[themaclad]

There was no twist in this four-day tale. A morning that began on time under the blue and cloudless sky with Dane Vilas playing Mohammad Abbas serenely into the covers and barking a "no" to his partner, Josh Bohannon, ended 68 minutes later with the Lancashire skipper late-cutting the same bowler to the Grosvenor Road boundary.

That took Vilas to 64, his first half-century of the season, and so barely a quarter-of-an-hour after Yorkshire had won their first Championship match of the season, Lancashire had achieved the same feat, leaving the anoraks to wonder how long it was since the two counties had waited so deep into the summer for such a modest triumph. And all this on the day when it had been announced that neither county would be hosting an Ashes Test in 2027, a year in which it might be a little grim up north.

In Southport, by contrast, any concerns were more local and immediate. Before the players had stopped shaking hands with everyone who had taken any role in the match, the chairs that has been put out in strict and serried rows only four or five days previously were being folded up and put away.

In fairness, no one had put those seats under undue strain by sitting on their edges. The few hundred spectators that had taken advantage of free admission and turned up on another glorious morning had seen what they expected to see without alarm or worry. The mood of the morning had been summed up by Luke Wood, who was not playing in the game, strolling around the boundary en route to the dug out with three syrup-strewn ice-creams in each hand.

Hampshire's successes were desultory. Josh Bohannon stroked two cover drives before being smartly caught one-handed to his right by James Vince off Felix Organ for 37 and Daryl Mitchell smacked Kyle Abbott over the long-off boundary before he tickled Abbas down the leg side to Ben Brown.

Other appeals from the Hampshire fielders were loud but they carried more hope than expectation. Instead, there was a gentle acceptance from both sets of players that the result of this match was pencilled in and that indelible ink would soon follow. Rob Jones arrived and swept Organ for successive fours before driving his next ball for a third. That left Vilas to administer the coup de grâce, a task he completed with the relish of a man who had scored only 84 runs in eight innings before he strode out to bat with Bohannon on Tuesday evening.

The victory means that Lancashire have extended their unbeaten run in four-day cricket to 14 matches. On the other hand, it was also the Old Trafford side's first Championship win since last September when they secured the runners-up place with an innings win against a Surrey side who were already celebrating the title.


"The victory felt great, firstly to get the win because we knew it would be a tough chase," said Vilas. "We'd played some good cricket coming into this game and we stuck together as a team and did the right things and got a good reward. We were a bit unsure about the pitch, with it being so dry. We knew if we bowled first we would have to bowl really well and every single bowler did that."

Meanwhile, the caravan moves on from Trafalgar Road to other precious cricket fields. On Friday some of these Lancashire players will be enjoying the lively atmosphere of Wantage Road on a T20 evening while Hampshire's cricketers will be taking on Sussex at Hove.

Before long, Southport will be a memory, one venue among many in a long season. Yet even as the chairs are being placed on pallets and the paraphernalia of professional cricket put away, members at Southport and Birkdale are hoping they get another game in 2024 and the chance to experience the exhaustion that now engulfs them.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

I thought the prose in that report seemed familiar, so googled the first line, and sure enough it's Paul Edwards! I've been reading his book (Summer Days Promise) these last few weeks, it's up there among the best cricket writing I've ever read, and Southport and Worcester are both venues clearly close to his heart. Can't recommend the book enough.

[themaclad]

Guess what I’m reading at the moment SNAP