1) Leach carries attack and grants hope
With Surrey only able to draw at Trent Bridge against a resilient Nottinghamshire, Somerset needed a win to apply a little pressure to the serial champions. With their top three back in the hutch after an hour, somebody needed to bat well to avoid wasting the chance to bat first against the Kookaburra ball.
At four, five and six, Tom Abell, Tom Banton and James Rew did, with scores of 124, 73 and 103 respectively. Handy knocks elsewhere got the home side up to 492, something for Jack Leach to work with.
Durham were no pushovers, Brydon Carse striking a first-innings ton, but the England left-armer was not to be denied, backing up five for 125 with seven for 50 as he found the wicket-taking line and length he often seems reluctant to use in England colours, seemingly encouraged to hold an end. Somerset are 24 points off the pacesetters – but we’ve been here before haven’t we?
Leach has bags of experience, but only turned 33 in June. If he can stay fit and healthy, he can be a huge asset to Somerset, especially late in the season when there’s just enough in dry and worn squares to assist his accuracy. Whether he will make his way back into the England team, only time will tell, but if he can bring a pennant to Taunton, he’ll not buy a pint of cider for the rest of his life.
2) Lancashire fail to go supersonic
How have Lancashire got into this mess? They’re 10 points from safety and their closest relegation rivals, Nottinghamshire, still have doomed Kent to play.
After two wins and two draws in the middle of the campaign buffed up the Red Rose, optimists believed a push for mid-table respectability with a young, emerging squad was on. Two innings defeats have disabused them of that belief, and there’ll be more planning away days to Cardiff and Derby than to Nottingham and Birmingham just now. There’s still time, but Lancashire will have to start beating opponents, and the weather, very soon.
That takes nothing away from Hampshire, who needed to win to keep their Championship hopes alive and did a professional job. Liam Dawson led the way, charging to his century in a last-wicket stand of 72 (Mohammad Abbas’s contribution: one) then delivering figures of five for 47 and five for 52 from 59 overs.
If Keaton Jennings and Josh Bohannon bat 57 minutes for one run in trying to save the game, there’s more wrong at Old Trafford than missing out on hosting an Oasis gig next year. Which of those two disappointments will sting those in charge more?
3) Kent can’t, again
Kent’s situation looks even more parlous having emulated their nearest rivals in the table with a miserable innings defeat inside three days at Edgbaston.
It’s hard to see a way back into a Kookaburra ball match if you’re bowled out inside 40 overs, Alex Davies’ team vindicating his decision to get straight into the visitors’ fragile batting. Warwickshire were already 49 runs ahead after day one, with Will Rhodes on his way to a double century in his valedictory season as a Bear.
Daniel Bell-Drummond, as has been so often the case in recent years, led from the front, but it wasn’t enough and, with Oliver Hannon-Dalby nagging away for six wickets to send him top of the Championship’s wicket-taking chart, Kent’s abject season continued and Warwickshire had their first win to go with seven draws.
4) Sussex burst Derbyshire’s bubble
In Division Two, Sussex burst the bubble of optimism that surrounded Derbyshire after their rare win in the previous round. It was bold of the visiting captain David Lloyd to invite Sussex to bat at Hove but Daniel Hughes is the form batter in the country. He cashed in with a century by mid-afternoon and Lloyd’s opposite number, John Simpson, was on the way to his at the close.
Wayne Madsen, 40 years old, had shown some fight with a first-innings century and Harry Came went old school to make 79 in just shy of six hours in the second dig, but it was only a matter of time after those first four sessions. Jack Carson consoled himself on missing out on a ton by three runs with the bat, taking five for 90 and six for 67 with the ball to complete a fine match.
Sussex are 20 points ahead of third-placed Yorkshire with Middlesex in between. They can’t quite taste top-flight cricket, as you do salt off the sea at Hove, but it looks like fairly plain sailing from here.
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5) All the young dudes
If you’ve ever tried to get a cat into a box for a trip to the vet’s, you’ll know what I mean. Try to push talent down and it will push straight back up, clawing its way to freedom like Andy Dufresne.
The opening up of county spots in the One Day Cup has had a knock-on effect on the four-day tournament, possibly through irrefutable cases being made, but also through players and captains seeing what can be done with a bit of belief.
Lancashire’s Rocky Flintoff has caught the eye, but not quite the headlines as yet, but that charge cannot be levelled at Farhan Ahmed, who broke one of WG Grace’s records last week. At 16 years of age, Nottinghamshire’s youngest ever Championship player marked his competition debut with seven for 140 and three for 77 to erase WG’s entry for the most youthful 10-wicket haul in England. Rehan’s little brother might soon find that the Test bowler is being referred to as Farhan’s big brother.
An honourable mention also to Freddie McCann of Nottinghamshire, who made 154 in more than five hours as the teens terrorised the champions with ball and bat. Archie Vaughan also enjoyed a steady start to life as a Somerset player, contributing effectively with bat and ball.
One of the delights of writing this column is to provoke the insights that invariably appear below the line in shrewd observations of the domestic scene: who are the best teenage cricketers you’ve seen this season?
6) Neither shipshape nor Bristol fashion
Though it’s gratifying to know that refunds will be paid and that waste food has gone to good causes, three days on from the abandonment of their match against Northamptonshire, there is still no explanation of events from Gloucestershire County Cricket Club.
Any investigation must follow procedure, but producing a pitch in August that proved too dangerous for professional cricket, feels like such a catastrophic failure that fans of the club, and of the Championship, deserve more.
That things can go wrong in a game so grounded in nature (grass, wood and animal hide still cricket’s main materials) is to be expected, but surely there were some signs that the pitch was problematic before play and, consequently, contingencies could be made? After the game was called off, was it impossible to find another ground – maybe even Wantage Road – that could be readied for a three-day match? I accept that if that short notice move led to another underprepared surface it would mirror the farce of sending in a second nightwatchman who also gets out, but there would be more sympathy, surely, for a club that was trying its best to rectify its error?
Cricket still finds too many ways to avoid playing cricket.
