Brummie Kryptonite and unbeaten failures – this week’s County Championship round-up

2 minute read

Let’s write a pointless opening sentence so that the formatting doesn’t look quite so weird when we give the Warwickshire v Durham game its own subheading.

Warwickshire v Durham

Warwickshire were very much on top after two days, but somehow, after making 313 and bowling Durham out for 190, they contrived to lose. How did this happen?

It’s tempting to say that Josh Poysden is some sort of Brummie Kryptonite. He joined the Bears team at that point and you could argue that he dragged them down.

Or maybe it was psychology. Having Chris Woakes, a good batsman, open in the second innings in the knowledge that he was about to be replaced by Poysden, a shit batsman, was taking the piss a bit. We wouldn’t be surprised if that added to Durham resolve. It can also be a challenge for the guilty side to play remorselessly when they’ve doubtless got a nagging sense that they’re in the wrong.

Rather more prosaically, the guy who took 9-36 in the first innings left the match midway through to go and meet up with the England squad. No matter how well they’d bowled ‘as a unit’ Warwickshire’s other bowlers had only actually managed one wicket between them in that first innings and weren’t much more toothy in the second.

For Durham, Keaton Jennings made another handy hundred. Perhaps we’d make him ‘one to watch’ if we did that kind of thing.

Lancashire v Surrey

Warwickshire are third and Durham move to second. Both are behind Lancashire, who are making the most of the North’s dry season this year. Doubtless they’ll fall back come the August rains, but for now they’re ten points clear.

Their latest win was built around a sterling performance by The Great Neil Wagner, who took 3-52 and 2-17. He was ably supported by Kyle Jarvis who took 11 wickets in the match and Alviro Petersen who made a ton.

For their part, Surrey are quite bad at cricket.

Hampshire v Nottinghamshire

Hampshire won despite none of their players doing anything particularly noteworthy. Tino Best got a four-for. That’s something – although Harry Gurney got nine in the match for the losing side.

Somerset v Middlesex

Two of the first division’s unbeaten sides continued their proud tradition of failing to win or lose a match this season. Middlesex are getting close though. They’ve mostly been rained off during their tour of the South-East in recent weeks but this time, at Lord’s, they were merely struck down by bad light.

Sam Robson made 99. Nick Gubbins made 109. We’d include more details but the Cricinfo scorecard we were looking at has gone invisible and won’t rematerialise even with a refresh.

Hereby we declare this week’s County Championship Division One round-up over.