A trip to headquarters

Posted by John Winn

Lord's looked splendid in the sunshine yesterday morning as Middlesex prepared to entertain Glamorgan on the first day of their Division Two County Championship match. Middlesex finished eighth last season with only Derbyshire below them but victories in their first four matches in 2011 has brought the promise of a much better campaign.
County cricket clubs are not immune to turbulent winters with Yorkshire setting a high standard in the recent past but events at Glamorgan last November take some beating. In short, chairman, coach, captain and coach's son all departed to be replaced by a new captain,South African Alviro Petersen and a new coach Australian Matthew Mott. And all this on the back of a relatively successful season in four day cricket in 2010 when only stubborn resistance from Derbyshire's middle order denied them promotion on the last day of the season. A nice touch was added to yesterday's proceedings by the presence in the Middlesex side of Glamorgan's exiting skipper,Jamie Dalrymple.Despite all this turbulence there is a refreshing continuity to Glamorgan's line up, Croft, Wallace and Powell for example have served the Principality side for more than fifty seasons in total.
The feature of the morning was an excellent spell of bowling from James Harris. His CV shows he was the youngest Glamorgan player ever to take a first class wicket and the youngest for any county to take ten wickets in a Championship match. Yesterday he became possibly the youngest Glamorgan player to take three wickets before 11:45 at Lord's on a Thursday.His victims included Andrew Strauss and overseas batsman Chris Rogers.Middlesx were all out for 150 shortly before tea with Dalrymple top scorer on 44. It suited this blogger that he was caught Bragg bowled Wragg. It probably suited Glamorgan that by the close of play they had a lead of one run with nine wickets in hand.
The smallish crowd were kept well informed throughout the day by the carefully enunciated tones of the announcer, who for example advised us that 'the luncheon interval would be of forty minutes duration' and to my surprise that we might 'perambulate on the outfield' during that time. I heard one man telephoning to express his delight that he was standing on 'the Halloween turf'.
If Lord's still has one foot in the past it has had no problems embracing twenty first century prices for its catering. To offset the modest admission charge of £7:50 for senior citizens it offers beer at £4:20 per pint. Throw in a pie and Desperate Dan would have to seriously think of going on a diet.Having been before I took pack up.