Posted by Champions Trophy, Ashes build-up… Must. Try. And keep on top of. County Championship.
1st – Yorkshire
Middlesex and Yorkshire were equal on points last time we did a County Championship update. They’ve played each other since then and Yorkshire won by 10 wickets. Hundreds were scored by Andrew Gale and the alphabet-bookending AZ Lees. Adil Rashid made 72 and then took 5-78 in Middlesex’s second innings. Rashid’s having a right old season, which will come to a crashing halt the minute England select him for some sort of development squad.
2nd – Durham
A high-scoring draw with Somerset edges into this update, but not in a way where we actually mention any specifics. An 11-run win over Warwickshire was far more significant in lifting Durham up the table. Durham didn’t really score any runs in this match, but that’s okay because they have Graham Onions, who took 5-83. Ben Stokes took seven cheap wickets in the match as well as scoring 61 in the first innings – not bad in a low-scoring game.
3rd – Sussex
Sussex were leading, but drop two places after somehow failing to bowl out Surrey, who have sacked their coaching team of Chris Adams and Ian Salisbury. For once, Chris Jordan relented sufficiently that Monty Panesar had a chance to pick up a five-wicket haul, but he conceded 142 runs in doing so. Vikram Solanki and Zander de Bruyn scored hundreds for Surrey. Yes, they do both play for Surrey. That’s partly why Adams got the arse.
The next chapter
Yorkshire are hosting Surrey, Sussex travel to Nottinghamshire (and will play them at cricket) and then nothing else happens until July the 8th.
Dear Kingcricket,
Beyond a boundary. Is it all that or not?
It’s an interesting book. It’s not as much of a cricket book as people would have you believe though. Cricket is often the subject matter, but the insight is usually about something else with the sport being used as either a backdrop, a metaphor, a point of reference or just a jumping off point.
It very much depends what you’re hoping to get out of reading it, we suppose.
Terrific book. Agree entirely with KC’s assessment that cricket is the context of the book more than the main content of it. The writing is beautiful.
If you have ever wondered why so many peoples around the world were motivated both to throw off the colonial yoke and to retain cricket, which might so easily have been rejected as a symbol of that colonialism, I suggest you read this book, which explains this phenomenon from a fascinating period in Trinidad’s history.
It seems to me that the Yorkshire talent scout is (and for some years only has been) especially interested in people whose first name begins with A. Messrs Lyth, Lees, Gale, Rashid being but four examples.
What of that young Yorkshire hopefuls Zacharias Yates or Zebedee Wainwright, to give but two of the better-known examples?
Have I spotted a Moneyball-style arbitrage of the Yorkshire talent pool? Or should I go back to bed and get some more sleep?
i see a.rashid got taken to the cleaners by KP earlier on. is he now becoming a batsman who can turn his arm over, or what?
jason gillespie reckons yorkshire bowled well, including “rash” as he is apparently known (yikes) – they just came up against a guy in form. let’s hope he stays that way