Congrats to Jonny Bairstow - maiden first-class century and it's twins.
Anyone know why Hales retired hurt from the Notts innings?
Bit tight looking in the Lancs-Warks match. We (Lancs) should win, but in low scoring games it only takes a bit of luck or some bad fielding to swing it.
From the photo caption on cricinfo:
"Alex Hales took a blow from Ajmal Shahzad and had to retire hurt"
OK not very close in the end. Once the spinners came on it lasted about 13 overs. Keedy finished with 3 for 2 and young Kerrigan 5 for 7 and 7 for 26 in the match. Warks all out for 97 and Lancs win by 147. Top o' the league!
Glossing over Lancashire's imminent loss to Notts, possibly scuppering their Championship chances for yet another year, I note that Trescothick now has over 1,000 championship runs this year in bounadries alone!
I see Charl Willoughby has left Somerset. Are they doing an experiment to see how well you can do in the championship with no bowlers at all?
Is second tier county cricket still counted as First Class?
>I see Charl Willoughby has left Somerset. Are they doing an experiment to see how well you can do in the championship with no bowlers at all?
Willoughby has signed for Essex, who last year conducted a similar experiment, although they did have one bowler (Masters)- it didn't go well.
It's snowing so it must be the first day of the County Championship!
So Somerset obviously decided a bowler would be useful and bought Philander
The Notts v Worcs match is all over the place! 20 wickets on day one and now Notts is building a very good 2nd inns score
I'm still very unimpressed by the Essex response to the Westfield/Kaneria saga, but that's a cracking win to start the CC season. My old man was at the game and reports that Chambers has slimmed down, looks lean, fit, and fast. And Mills is a young left-arm pace bowler who is apparently wild but seriously rapid. An innings win, and Willoughby still in reserve. Suddenly we seem to have a serious attack, for the first time in quite a while.
As do Derbyshire. I hope DW gets 100 wickets.
And the man with no name picked up a decent wicket at the end, according to this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/hi/english/static/cri
cket/statistics/scorecards/2012/04/o34479/html/scor
ecard.stm
Yorks currently 80/6 against the students, still 131 behind on first innings. it was only the other week I was reading something questioning the value of the student matches as they were always so one-sided.
Don't know who wrote that, but this article suggests they're somewhat out of date:
http://www.lords.org/latest-news/news-archive/first-class-for-cardiff-leeds,2243,NS.html
"In 2011 the MCCUs* acquitted themselves well throughout the eighteen county matches played, securing ten draws**, in addition to a historic victory by Cambridge against a Surrey side captained by Kevin Pietersen at Fenner’s in May."In other news, Sussex successfully chased a princely 1 run 4th innings target against Lancs. And Notts are in a strong position up in Durham: having set Durham 368, they've got them on the ropes at 54-6.
Happy New Season, everyone.
*The six 'MCC Universities': Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Loughborough, Cardiff and Leeds/Bradford. Formerly UCCEs ('University Centres of Cricketing Excellence').
** Admittedly they're usually 3 day matches, so a draw is the most probable result.
Was chatting to a recently retired County cricketer this morning in the school playground who is now on the coaching staff and he says they could really do without the University games. They're not great practice for the Counties, are full of banana skins to embarass them and they already have a crowded fixture list.