A Result Unique to Cricket

While cricket is not the only sport to use the word ‘draw’, the way that word is used in cricket is different from in any other sport. In cricket the draw covers any situation in which neither team has been able to win within the allotted time. Ties are rare in cricket because to be a tie the side batting second has to lose its final wicket with the scores level – if times runs out with scores level, as happened in the “We flippin’ murdered ’em” test match between Zimbabwe and England, when then coach David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd, exasperated by Zimbabwe getting away with bowling deliberately wide because the umpires obtusely stuck to test match rules regarding wides, flipped his lid in the immediate aftermath of the result being confirmed. This post looks at two very different draws from the last round of county championship fixtures by way of illustrating the sheer range of match situations that can come under the heading of ‘drawn’ in the game of cricket.

EDGBASTON – THE ULTIMATE IN STALEMATES

Warwickshire hosted Surrey, winners of the last three county championships, in this round of fixtures, and as far I am concerned the surface the Edgbaston ground staff offered up for the occasion tells its own story about Warwickshire’s level of ambition for this match: they wanted a high scoring draw, from which each side would accrue a respectable haul of points, since they did not believe they could beat Surrey. Rory Burns won the toss for Surrey but then put Warwickshire in to bat. Warwickshire batted for the first five sessions of the match, piling up 665-5 declared. By the end of the third of the four scheduled days Surrey were nine down, with Ben Foakes and Matther Fisher together at the crease. Had Warwickshire got the final wicket early on the fourth morning they may have been able to make life hard for Surrey in the follow-on. In the event, even with the half hour extension permitted when a side is nine down at the lunch interval, Warwickshire did not get the wicket at all that morning. By the time Fisher was finally last out for 40 Foakes had gone to a career best 174 not out, and Surrey had topped 500, having batted 178 overs. They had not quite done enough to avoid the follow on, which Warwickshire enforced as they had to. The Surrey second innings was barely underway by tea time, at which point Jupiter Pluvius, clearly as unimpressed by the pitch and the farce of a match that resulted as I was, intervened, enabling a game that had pretty much been DOA to be officially put out of its misery. I hope that Warwickshire get a points deduction for preparing such a surface – it was blatantly unfit for a four day game, since it would have taken eight days at a minimum to generate a result on it.

CHELMSFORD – ALIVE TO THE LAST POSSIBLE BALL

When Essex resumed overnight on 64-4, 456 adrift of a gargantuan victory target this match did not look like being a great one. However, the overnight pair of Critchley and Pepper held the fort until the stroke of tea when Pepper was out. Two more wickets immediately post tea, Thain and Critchley, left it up to South African Simon Harmer, mainly noted for being the best off spinner currently playing county cricket, but also a very useful lower order batter to shepherd the tail if Essex were to escape with a draw. When Rajitha was out just in to the last hour (and we were dealing in time by then because a combination of Essex being committed to defence and spinners bowling for Yorkshire meant that way more than the scheduled minimum number of overs was being bowled) Jamie Porter, with a career batting average of six, joined Harmer for the last stand. The last over of the match, which Yorkshire just managed to sneak in, getting it underway at 17:59 on day four, one minute before the scheduled close, Dom Bess’ 38th of the innings, the 133rd in all, and the 106th that Yorkshire bowled on that final day began with Porter on strike, but the Essex number 11 managed a single, just the second run of his innings, off the first ball thereof which meant that Harmer was back on strike. Harmer played out the remaining five balls, and Essex, 273-9 and still 247 short of the winning target had held out for the draw in a very exciting finish. Yorkshire might have been less cautious about their second innings declaration, but when they had Essex four down overnight it looked as though they had more than made up for any overcaution about that declaration, and Essex deserve credit for the way they fought through to that draw.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…