Key events
Friday’s round-up
Somerset’s James Rew was a shot of ginger on a rainy Championship day. He purred the last ball of the evening to the rope with a perfect high elbow, to finish unbeaten on 77. With innings of 64, 122 and 48 already this season, Rew’s average is 100 – numbers to lighten an England selector’s step. Thirteen wickets fell around him, with Jake Lehmann (76), who has stepped into James Vince’s boots, again top-scoring for Hampshire. There were three wickets each for Lewis Gregory and Craig Overton.
Essex had time before the deluge to reduce Warwickshire to 113 for seven – the pinpoint Jamie Porter leading the way with four for 36. Sam Hain, with 44, was the rock around which the other Warwickshire players failed to stick. There was a first Essex wicket for Zaman Akhter, a Saca (South Asian Cricket Academy) graduate who moved to Chelmsford from Bristol in the great winter raid on Gloucestershire’s bowling stocks.
Akhter’s old club suffered a mid-order malfunction against Lancashire. Ben Charlesworth and Ollie Price had lifted Gloucestershire to a respectable 80 for one, after Cameron Bancroft was dopily run out for six. But George Balderson (four for 27) then took three for five before and after lunch, and when Graeme van Buuren was caught for a three-ball duck, the innings was in disarray. Lancashire had their own problems when Ajeet Singh Dale limped off the field with a hamstring injury and was replaced by Ollie Sutton, summoned from a second XI match in Leicestershire.
Middlesex made a plucky recovery against Northamptonshire on a bouncy Wantage Road pitch from the depths of 20 for three after winning the toss and choosing to bat. Half-centuries from Leus Du Plooy and Ben Geddes and an unbeaten seventh-wicket stand of 120 between Zafar Gohar and Joe Cracknell brightened the scoreboard, before bad light stopped play.
Scores on the doors
DIVISION ONE
Southampton: Hampshire 238 v Somerset 154-3
Edgbaston: Warwickshire 113-7 v Essex
DIVISION TWO
Bristol: Gloucestershire 124-6 v Lancashire
Northampton: Northants v Middlesex 284-6
Preamble
Hello! Happy Saturday morning, may your park run have been fruitful and your coffee tasty. Four games in progress this round, with James Rew’s selectorial nudge the highlight of day one. Play starts at 11am, do pull up a seat.
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