Points won in April count the same as points secured in September, but it does not feel like that. After winning just two of their first eight games of the season, Warwickshire have put together a run of four wins from five matches and now sit 11 points clear at the top of Division One. Win their last match of the season, at home to Leicestershire, and they are champions.
Warwickshire’s trip to Essex had looked like a tricky fixture and it still did at the end the first day. Nineteen wickets fell, with Ethan Bamber taking six of them. The next morning, Oliver Hannon-Dalby batted for nearly an hour with Sam Hain, whose 88 not out secured Warwickshire a lead of 57 – which is as good as 157 on a midsummer track to the title hunters.
Over to Manav Suthar, who bowled out the home side, eight batters getting starts but only Paul Walter’s 42 passing 30. It looked like a very bad result for relegation-threatened Essex, but cricket always finds a way of making things hard to understand – and it soon did. That is because Leicestershire were penalised 27 points by pitch inspectors halfway through this round of matches (farcical) with a 10-day window to appeal expiring halfway through the next round of matches (farcical) after a Bollywood film set damaged the Grace Road square in mid-August (farcical).
To their immense credit, the Leicestershire players got on with their jobs with the necessary competence and urgency and won their crucial relegation battle against Hampshire.The captain’s role is more important than ever in such circumstances and Ian Holland’s nine wickets proved the difference between the sides. That said, 334 in the fourth innings takes a bit of getting. Rehan Ahmed and Nick Kelly did the heavy lifting before Ben Cox (surplus to requirements according to the same management that lent their ground to the film producers) finished the chase with 75 not out.
The defeat means that Hampshire will play in Division Two for the first time since 2014. They cycled through 21 players to find the support for Kyle Abbott (the top wicket-taker in the division), which says it all. The loss of Liam Dawson’s runs and wickets have been particularly keenly felt.
Somerset ran into two cliches at once in their match against Yorkshire: the curse of being eternal runners-up and coming up against a former player who bites the hand that once fed him. On a Headingley pitch that offered a bit to the seamers, there wasn’t much between the sides until the home side’s middle order rolled over to leave the Tykes just 65 ahead with four second-innings wickets in hand. That sent ex-Somerset player, Dom Bess, out to join fellow all-rounder, George Hill.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
