oh dear. totally unnecessary wicket. i hope he stops doing that. fine in t20, but not when you've got 4 more days of a test match to play and you're building your first innings total and it relies on you staying in. boycott famously cut out any and all risky shots. atkinson going nicely and currently setting his new test high score. anything over 350 would be good at the moment.
root now has more test runs in england than any other player, 6630. cook made 6568 and gooch 5917. so the secret, clearly, is to have a double o in your surname. after that the number drops down to 4716 for atherton in 4th place. root's home average is 55.25 and one has to drop to 11th and 12th in the list of runs in england before finding a higher average, those being denis compton - 3963 at 60.04 - and len hutton - 3930 at 57.79. peter may at 23rd, with 2865 at 57.30, is next higher and then at 26th is none other than don bradman, with 2674 at 102.84. messrs border (65.06), richards (64.28), and waugh (s) (74.22) also appear in the top 50 with too healthy averages. boycott (again with the two o thing - see also denis compton) is 9th with 4356 at 48.40.
former yorkshire player will rhodes, nottingham born and cottingham schooled, is currently helping warwickshire's reply to kent's 156, he is beating kent on his own with 200no from 413/7. his best score is 207. can he pass that?
No surprise he’s way ahead with the number of 50’s, I remember a spell earliyish in his career when he couldn’t convert his 50’s which lasted over a few years. Considering that barren spell ( for 100’s), its astounding he’s now top of the tree foe England. I wonder what his conversion rate is since that spell.? I suspect he learnt to never waste an opportunity.
root now has 200 test catches. in the list of non-wicket keepers, that puts him equal third of all test players, ten fewer than the most (dravid 210, jayawardene 205, kallis also 200). for england, cook is second with 175. only 15 wicket keepers have taken more test catches.
can be a problem when one team gets a big score, unfortunately. a batting paradise often means a draw.
Sat up in the gods after lunch and had a good view of the pitch. Absolutely no wear and tear at all which you would expect by day 3
there was a game last season that started with a couple of monster scores and it somehow ended with a win. it all changed for the last two sessions. involved glamorgan and a 410 not out from one player. i'll dig a link out for you. i posted about it as it progressed. here: https://www.espncricinfo.com/series...stershire-vs-glamorgan-1297754/full-scorecard leicester 584 glamorgan 795/5dec (461 unbroken 6th wicket stand) leicester 183
5 wickets in the second innings for Atkinson to go with his hundred in the first. Exciting talent this lad.
Yorkshire v Middlesex fades to a predictable draw. Gain 2 points on them so not a disaster, but promotion no longer in our hands. Sussex winning isn't ideal either. Think they're gone now
three games left, so anything could happen. i hate that the county championship is treated as the least of all the competitions with huge gaps between some of the games. middlesex play sussex in their final match and perhaps that'll make all the difference, unless sussex are already on the beach.
pope's century, his 7th in tests, have given him a unique record. he's the only player to score his first seven test centuries against seven different countries. reports mention that he's the only one to do this "in 147 years" (or whetever it is), but fails to mention that there haven't always been enough test-playing countries for this to be possible. also one of pope's 100s was against ireland. you can, of course, only play the opposition put in front of you.
