We are at the halfway stage of the second round of County Championship matches for 2024. My main focus is on Surrey v Somerset, but I will also mention other games.
DAY ONE
Surrey won the toss and elected to bowl first. At 196-1 with Renshaw and especially Lammonby going very well it wasn’t looking great for the home side. However a run out accounted for Renshaw for 87, and Lammonby fell immediately after reaching three figures (a bit of an issue for him – he now has a double figure tally of FC hundreds but has yet to go on even as far as 120). That got Surrey on a roll, and Somerset soon found themselves 216-8. A bit of a revival, spearheaded by Lewis Gregory, boosted the final total to 285, which looked at least 100 below par given the flatness of the pitch and the fact of the Kookaburra ball being in use. Cam Steel, treated by his first county, Durham, as a specialist batter claimed four wickets to follow his five against Lancashire, and ended the innings with an FC bowling average of below 30 for the first time in his career. Gus Atkinson had 3-57 from 19 overs, proving that not all seamers are completely emasculated by the Kookaburra (see also Sam Cook’s cheap 6-for v Nottinghamshire in the first round of fixtures). Surrey reached the close on 42-0, with no Somerset bowler posing a threat, and both Burns and Sibley looking comfortable.
DAY TWO
Surrey batted sensibly, and never had anything approaching a collapse. Gregory looked an unthreatening medium pacer, Craig Overton was decent but not massively threatening and it was the two youngest Somerset bowlers, Bashir with his off spin and right arm fast medium bowler Kasey Aldridge who by far the most impressive. Sibley reached three figures, Burns just missed that mark, Jamie Smith played a little gem of an innings and Foakes made a solid half century. Dan Lawrence’s first innings for his new county was a failure, but Cam Steel followed his good bowling by settling in nicely with the bat, and Surrey closed day two on 358-6, 73 runs to the good with four wickets standing (and Jamie Overton is probably the best number nine batter in current county cricket while number 10 Gus Atkinson is far from being a mug with the bat).
DAY THREE SO FAR
There is no sign of any early trouble for Surrey as yet, and they have added six to their overnight total for no loss.
ELSEWHERE
Durham, after not getting on the field at home for their opening game, had a deeply chastening experience at Edgbaston, putting their hosts into bat and watching them amass 698-3 declared, with all of the top three passing 150 (skipper Alex Davies leading the rampage with 256). Middlesex also suffered horribly at Northamptonshire, the home side’s 552-6 declared meaning that the two first innings that Middlesex have bowled through so far have a combined aggregate of 1172-9. Derbyshire and Glamorgan are locked in a low scoring battle which proves that wicket taking is possible with the Kookaburra. Off spinning all rounder Alex Thomson has a 10 wicket match haul for the home side. The Thames Estuary derby between Essex and Kent looks like being a high scoring draw, but the Nottinghamshire v Worcestershire and Hampshire v Lancashire games look less batter dominated. The county of my birth, Gloucestershire, are currently having somewhat the worse of their match against Yorkshire. While I have been typing this Aldridge has claimed a thoroughly deserved third wicket of the Surrey innings, dismissing Jordan Clark. We are about to witness twin against twin – Craig Overton bowling to Jamie Overton.
THE KOOKABURRA EXPERIMENT
Many are bemoaning the absence of seriously low scoring April games which used to be a feature of the championship with the Duke ball in use. I am not among them, and nor am I rushing to judgement on the experiment. The purpose of using the Kookaburra in place of the Duke at the extremes of the season is to lessen the influence of those who have been making a living nipping the Duke around at 75mph – such bowlers will never succeed at test level, and increase the variety of bowling on show. The efforts of Sam Cook, Gus Atkinson and Kasey Aldridge shows that high quality seamers can still do it with the Kookaburra (only Atkinson of this trio is capable of touching the sort of speeds that would be considered genuinely fast, and even for him that kind of pace is the exception rather than the rule), while spinners never used to feature this early in the season, and the performances of Thomson, Steel and a few others are showing that these bowlers now get a look in early in the year. One season is not enough to form a definite judgement, so even I was unimpressed with the Kookaburra experiment I would want it to continue. As it is I see no reason to believe that it cannot work, and I hope it is persevered with.
PHOTOGRAPHS
I have a splendid gallery for you…
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