Posted by They bothered playing some of the County Championship this week. Need they have?
The Roses match
After little more than a day, Jimmy Anderson had succumbed to groin knackage, Jack Brooks had made a hundred and this match already seemed like it was no longer a going concern. All that was really left was for the liquidator to confirm it and Shivnarine Chanderpaul duly obliged. He took what runs he could and the fixture folded. It will be revived next week in a different location.
Middlesex v Surrey
Usually when someone’s got something to prove, it’s a big deal to them; a real “See! I can DO this,” kind of thing. For Kumar Sangakkara it’s more of a gentle little hobby; a few little details he’d still like to fill in around the edges of a large unarguable point made long ago. Kumar made a hundred in each Surrey innings of this match and maybe someone somewhere thought fractionally more of him as a result. Match drawn.
The other match
Jonathan Trott went big for Warwickshire and despite Marcus Trescothick leaving his counter-hundred for Somerset undaddified they ran out of time for anything else to happen.
The other other match
Now this one went somewhere. An Alastair Cook fuelled Essex made a moderately good score and then Jamie Porter took five Hampshire wickets for spit. They won by an innings. We may have to stop thinking of Essex as being inked in for relegation what with their currently being top of the table and all. Surrey are a full point behind.
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Fancied Essex to do OK because they have Cook for most of the season. Cook seems to look like he is playing a different sport whenever he has a stint in the Championship. Their bowling being good after losing Napier and Masters is a bit of a shock though.
Would be interested to see combined batting stats of >38 aged batsmen this year. Chanderpaul, Sangakkara, Trescothick, Collingwood and Stevens all seem to be tearing it up to a greater or lesser degree.
Hampshire’s batting sounded well decent and Essex’s bowling looked well ordinary against The Mighty Middle, so the Essex v Hampshire result came as a bit of a surprise.
No doubt the Malloys were dancing in the streets of Harold Hill over the weekend…yes, despite Chas’s gammy knee.
Incidentally, I personally witnessed Sangakkara reaching all three of his first class hundreds at Lord’s.
Daisy was with me for two of the three – the one on Sunday and also the first of them, which was an auspicious day reported on King Cricket thus:
http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/england-v-sri-lanka-at-lords-day-three-match-report/2014/10/24/
Being as I am a rabbit in the Lord’s pavilion I was very surprised at how many people wandered into their seats on the middle balcony in the middle of an over. One chap in alarming pink strides would have stopped traffic.
Saturday crowd, London derby, could have been anybody. Not one of the middle balcony mafia for sure.
Normally it would be hard to get past the middle balcony stewards mid over – even to slide onto one of those back-and-to-the-side seats which would disturb no-one.