Essex and Sussex win on earliest ever start
Lancashire are disappointing their fans before the Easter egg wrapping is in the bin
Ball one: Matt shines as he paints town red
Two teams looking to draw a line under a lacklustre 2025 faced off at the Utlita Bowl as Hampshire and Essex sought to capitalise on the spring in the step that April always brings. It was to prove a sobering three days for the home side, dispatched by an innings and plenty and with another long season now stretching out in front of them.
Their chief destroyer was Matt Critchley, the all-rounder surprisingly still the right side of 30. Arriving at the crease after his captain, Tom Westley had suffered a broken finger necessitating the first injury replacement in Championship history – Noah Thain, future pub quizzers. Critchley cruised to 173, before Simon Harmer and Shane Snater’s fun was curtailed by the declaration coming with 500 in sight. Hampshire’s first innings started with seven wickets inside 26 overs and, following on, their second innings finished with seven in 22, five of which fell to Critchley’s legbreaks. You can’t win matches like that.
A post-Ashes April is always a time to speculate on England call-ups and, at seven years younger than 2025 Test selection, Liam Dawson, whom he comprehensively outplayed in this match, Critchley’s first class record is very similar. He’s a long way back just now, but certainly in the “We could do a lot worse” category.
Ball two: red-faced Leicestershire left cheesed off
After more than two decades away, Division One cricket returned to Grace Road with crisis club Sussex looking ideal opponents for a morale boosting home win. That said, cricket seldom sticks to an easy narrative and experience won out.
Ian Holland, stepping into the unexpectedly vacant captain’s role after Peter Handscomb’s family commitments keeps him in Australia for the season, followed suit with all his fellow captains (except Lancashire’s James Anderson) and decided to bowl. With Sussex with batting all the way to his opposite number, Ollie Robinson, at 10, that looked a very ballsy call and, one down and 346 behind at the end of day one, so it proved.
Robinson is as wily an operator as you’ll find on the county circuit and it won’t just be Sussex fans wondering if leadership can strengthen the mental and fitness sides of his game, too often weak links at international level. He and fellow seamer, Henry Crocombe, took five wickets each in the first innings with Crocombe adding four more in the second dig for a fine personal match.
Leicestershire fell over 100 runs short in each innings – a reminder of the gap between the divisions – and face a daunting trip to The Oval next up.
Ball three: Overton’s declaration overkill
It’s a recurring gripe of this column that captains are too cautious in their declarations, too fearful of the prospect of defeat to seize the chance of victory. If there’s one county you would expect to take that criticism to heart, it’s Somerset, six time runners-up in the Championship in this century alone.
As day four dawned, the home side were in total control against the reigning champions, leading by 223 runs with nine wickets in hand. Nottinghamshire were staring at a deflating start to their defence of the pennant and a significant points gap to a real rival before the Easter holiday was done.
Stand-in skipper, Craig Overton, batted on for another 34 overs to set a wholly unachievable 417 in 60 overs, inviting Haseeb Hameed to just bat – which he and his teammates just did. Of course, the pitch was benign, his centurions (Tom Abell, Tom Kohler-Cadmore and James Rew) could attest to that, and with his own 26 overs for just the one dismissal, he knew wringing wickets from the surface wasn’t easy.
But we all know about faint hearts and fair ladies/gentlemen/non-binary persons…
Ball four: Carlson falls just short of checkmating Yorkshire
Not far north, at Sophia Gardens, Kiran Carlson had other ideas. Perhaps thinking that Glamorgan would be forced into home draws by the weather later in the season, he knew that he had to take every opportunity to grab a win if his newly promoted side were to survive in the top flight.
Colin Ingram’s century supported by some fine late middle order batting had been backed up by Mason Crane’s fivefer to yield a handy 76 run lead on first innings. Perhaps sensing blood with his opposite number, Jonny Bairstow, out injured, Carlson declared before lunch on day four asking Yorkshire to make 295 from 68 overs. Now that’s more like it!
Adam Lyth, 11 years Carlson’s elder, might have given the cocky captain a look as he took guard in pursuit of so gettable a target and, at 125-1 with 170 to get in 33 overs, he might have ventured a word too. But legspinner, Crane, who must have been revelling in the belief his captain had shown in him, dismissed the experienced Doncaster-born Aussie number three, Sam Whiteman, and then James Wharton, it was soon the visitors who were hanging on, seven down, at the close.
As any Australian will tell you ad nauseum, there’s no such thing as a moral victory, but Glamorgan can take the positives out of this draw without apologising for the cliché.
Ball five: du Plooy plundering runs again
It was a cold Good Friday that greeted the long-suffering faithful at Lord’s, back for another year of parlously financed Middlesex cricket. The landlords were building again, the Allen Stand being upgraded, leaving a gap where my preferred big screen once sat. I stopped counting how many times I looked for the score in that void at half a dozen.
However, one man was seeing exactly what he wanted to see, Leus du Plooy backing up last season’s valedictory 263 not out against Gloucestershire with 182 six months later, getting splendid support from a busy Joe Cracknell, their sixth wicket stand of 181 establishing an ascendency that was never really challenged. Toby Roland-Jones picked up a fivefer and there were more encouraging signs from teenage pacer, Sebastian Morgan, with four second innings wickets to secure an innings victory.
Before play, there was a poignant minute’s silence for the late Mick Hunt, long-serving groundsman and “Mr Lord’s” for many of us who like to arrive early at HQ. His beloved turf looked beautiful after its winter relaying, but it was desperately slow and the fact that 16 of 29 dismissals were bowled or LBW tells you all you need to know about a slow, low deck on the square.
It’s almost like the first week of April might be a bit early for The Summer Game.
Ball six: Anderson thwarted by Sanderson
It is, of course, unfair to condense four days of combat on first class cricket’s vast canvas into a single Seuratesque point; more unfair still to blame one man for the result.
Lancashire’s Michael Jones dropped a straightforward catch at third slip offered by Northamptonshire’s number 11, Ben Sanderson, as about 10,000 watched on YouTube, a majority sporting a red rose rather than the Tudor variety. There were still four overs of long-shadowed struggle to go, but the Lancashire fans’ fatalism was in full bloom and Sir James’s men could not ride to the rescue.
What is fairer is to praise the Northants tail who took the first innings from 103-6 to 258 all out and the second from 50-6 to 213-9, George Bartlett’s 95 not out leading the hour long tenth wicket stand at the death. Runs after the fall of the sixth wicket are so critical in two innings matches.