Hampshire First innings 367 all out. Second innings 179 - 4 wickets Lancashire First innings 484 all out Match Drawn
Another two rounds of it to come at the back end of the season. Fans, coaches, players; all hate it. Just a stupid idea by the ECB. Two rounds last year was bad enough. Four rounds this year is even worse.
The only good thing is it helped both Kent and Somerset salvage draws. But surely the ECB will see that EVERY match in both divisions this round ended in a draw (and was relatively unaffected by weather) and maybe ditch their stupid idea.
This is how you set a field when you’re trying to remove the last Aussie player to win the test and draw level in the series at 1-1. Every player is around the bat, except for Deadly. The outfield at the Oval was saturated and following a request from the England captain, Colin Cowdrey, the crowd helped to mop up the water and get the game back on, giving England 75 minutes to take the last 5 wickets. The pitch, as you can see, was covered with sawdust.
That is how you set a field back then! Nowadays I can count at least 4 players standing in illegal positions.
As we're still 1 wicket down, I'd like to see more aggressive batting this afternoon. Try and get to near 400 by tea.
Fuller in at 4. Didn't see that coming. But that does mean they're looking to score at a quicker rate. Hopefully Middleton has got the message.
Not particularly impressed with Middleton TBH. Should have scored more than 116 off 329 balls. Need to over 150 if you're facing that many balls.
One batting point from 110 overs is absolutely pathetic. Top order is far too negative compared to other counties. They take up too many balls going at 2 an over, or even less sometimes.
I see that Holland has signed up to play in the American MLC this summer. Starts on 4 July, and is expected to last about a month. Qualifies as a domestic player, which would have made him attractive. It's not a problem that he'll miss the second half of the Blast, because I doubt he'll be in our first XI anyway. But he'll potentially also miss the first half of the 50 over comp, which he presumably would have played in.
Without his contribution Hampshire could/would have followed on with the bigger chance of losing. Also it seemed to me he was to some extent playing to order, providing the base for those who score quickly to have stability at the other end. That Fuller, Vince and Prest scored less than 20 runs between them is not his fault. We know from his shot making in the one dayers last season he has a good range of shots. That he chose to be the glue that held much of the innings together seems to me to have been a team decision.
It has been slow going at the Bowl so far this season, thanks to the pitches as well as the ball type. It would have been nice for Middleton to have scored a bit more quickly but at least he played himself back into some sort of form, gave us that stability that we have craved for years at the top of the order. Now we just need Orr to get a score on the board. I hope Barker and/or Turner are back soon, we've looked a bit 'off the pace' thus far. Nice to see Brown get a decent score too, he needed that confidence boost. Edit: I see that Turner is playing for the 2nds, which is good news. It's annoying if Holland misses the first half of the 50 over comp, we were short on bowlers with no Currie or Crane as it was. Perhaps that makes it certain that Barker will play more (especially as he hasn't had any game time at all yet) and we'll have to rely on Kelly and Jack again.
I see Turner's back in the squad. Given our bowling struggles without Barker in the side I definitely want to see him included in the side tomorrow.
