Champions Nottinghamshire go top, but a beast is stirring in Kennington
Emilio Gay makes his case for an England cap and Ben Sanderson delivers a sublime spell for Northants
Ball one: foxes hunted down in mismatch
The champions picked up a second win of the season to float, without much fanfare, to the top of Division One, their lead eight points.
With Rehan Ahmed not playing in the IPL (the way he would so often not play on tour for England), the home side were shorn of their most important player at Grace Road. It must have been particularly galling for the members to see Ben Duckett, the man Ahmed replaced at the Delhi Capitals, score 77 as Nottinghamshire reached 405/4 at the end of the first day, having been put into bat. Bens, Slater (178) and Green (7-112), were the stars on either side in a match shaped by its first four sessions.
Haseeb Hameed has a classically balanced attack at his disposal to deliver 20 wickets and unleashed genuine pace first time round, eight wickets shared between Olly Stone and Dillion Pennington. After enforcing the follow-on (he had been invited to bat having lost the toss, so why not?), he whistled up the slow left arm of Liam Patterson-White for the third innings, who matched Stone with a fivefer of his own to seal a 23 points haul.
Leicestershire are the only winless team in the division and hover just above the drop zone and the instant return to Division Two. My sympathy is scant consolation.
Ball two: no doubting Thomas’s potential (part one)
South of the Thames, one can discern the rumble of heavy artillery being assembled once again (although that might just be Jordan Clark running in from the Pavilion End).
Watching numbers nine and ten both make centuries, Jack Carson and Ollie Robinson frolicking in the first real heat of the summer, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that Sussex’s 358/9d was at least 100 under par on a wicket that was true, if pacy, and an outfield as quick as Lord’s is slow. It looked a good score because, from 92/7, it was, but it was put in perspective by Surrey’s 622.
That Dom Sibley took a look at the surface and booked in for a couple of days was expected, as was the smattering of handy contributions through the card. Less expected was a debut century from the teenage Adam Thomas, the latest product of Surrey’s conveyor belt of talent, who hit 120 from number seven. Sibley, at the grand old age of 30, must have looked on with a paternal eye recalling his own double-hundred back in 2016.
You don’t win all those pennants through sentimentality and Sussex were welcomed back to the crease with Matt Fisher’s first over that comprised a head impact assessment for Tom Haines and the wickets of Tom Clark and James Coles. Sussex, whose resilience is admirable this season, did not capitulate, but there was no way back from there.
Ball three: no doubting Thomas’s potential (part two)
Somerset picked a good round to miss last week, but that only really matters if you can roar back with the win that eluded all their rivals. And they had their chances in a splendid seesaw affair with Yorkshire.
Coming in down the order these days, the home captain, Lewis Gregory is morphing from all-rounder to bowler who bats in a reversal of the usual drift in one’s mid-30s. Not that he’ll care if he can take 6-43 in the first innings of a match. He handed over to his batters and 21 year-old Josh Thomas backed him up with 136 to give Somerset a first innings lead of 112.
The Taunton crowd were in good voice with both openers gone cheaply to Craig Overton, but James Wharton found a useful partner in Joe Root and useful runs down the order gave the Tykes something to bowl at. In a low scoring match, they’d been gifted 57 extras – unacceptable surely for professional cricketers?
A team setting off in pursuit of 260 know that a century or three decent half-centuries should do it, so long as every batter stays positive and avoids being part of a collapse. When Rew Snr was out in the 16th over with the score 21/3, the home side had managed neither and, though Thomas was to top score again, Dom Bess and that man Root spun Yorkshire to victory on the fourth afternoon.
Yorkshire scrambled out of the bottom two, but if Somerset fall short in September yet again, here were 16 points they really should have bagged.
Ball four: Carlson checkmates Hampshire
Glamorgan are making a much better fist of Division One cricket than I expected, although praise should be tempered for now as they inflicted a second innings defeat of the season on rock bottom Hampshire.
Five years ago, this column anointed Kiran Carlson one of its five county cricketers of the year. Since then he’s gone on to captain his county in their promotion season and hit 16 first class centuries, topping out with his first double in this match at the Utilita Bowl. Nearly 28, he’s probably missed the bus for international honours, but consistent top flight runs are supposed to be catching selectors’ eyes these days.
Carlson will certainly have noticed Zain-ul-Hassan, the all-rounder opening for the first time this season and sharing a stand of 318 with his skipper, who might be inclined to send him in at 11am in the next match too.
Only Ben Mayes’ 59 in the first innings and a “boy stood on the burning deck” knock from captain, Ben Brown following on, kept Hampshire respectable as the nous of Timm van der Gugten and Mason Crane returned 13 wickets between them.
Ball five: don’t abandon Gay
With Durham arriving in the capital and Middlesex stacking their batting, bunnies were as rare as burrows at Lord’s. It looked like a match full of runs and so it proved despite a sluggish pitch and even more clingy outfield.
The draw kept Durham at the top of the table, but the match was notable for Emilio Gay’s third century of the season. He has 473 runs at 94, behind only Joe Clarke, whom England would probably have picked by now had they wanted to.
So will England look at the county game (as has been suggested) and, if so, how will they weigh Division Two runs against those at the higher level? Ben Stokes was at Lord’s last week and will know Gay from the dressing room, so he’s in a good position to make the call.
Ball six: The dying art of Sanderson, Anderson and McGrath
Northamptonshire welcomed an in-form Worcestershire to Wantage Road, conceded 164 to Gareth Roderick, finding some fluency this season – and then won by an innings and plenty to go second.
Ricardo Vasconcelos’s ton set the platform, but 310 runs were added for the sixth and seventh wickets to take the game away from the visitors. James Sales (in blistering form) and Lewis McManus both tonned up, and Saif Zaib and George Bartlett also chipped from that very strong Northants lower middle order.
Cue Ben Sanderson who, not for the first time in his career, transformed into Glenn McGrath, seaming it half a bat’s width while homing in on the top of off stump. Some of the shots played were not great, but his 7-31 was an exquisite display of an undervalued art.