Championship hotting up.

posted by John Winn

Yesterday offered the first championship cricket at The Riverside for six weeks. In the meantime Durham have maintained a slender lead at the top of the first division courtesy mainly of a win at Liverpool but suffered a heavy defeat at Taunton two weeks ago when for the second time this season Mustard invited Somerset to bat and Marcus Trescothick duly cashed in.Yesterday's visitors were Notts, last year's champions but this year rather let down by a fragile early order.
Mustard has been remarkably lucky with the toss but I was somewhat surprised to find that on an extremely sultry morning, Durham had taken first innings. The morning's play was probably just shaded by Notts,with Durham losing three wickets. Collingwood's dismissal for nought provided something to stir the breathless air for he was clearly not impressed with the decision which gave him caught behind and he appeared to exchange words with the umpire on his way from the middle.
The afternoon session was spoilt by the weather when shortly after two o'clock the almost inevitable heavy shower sent the players to the dressing rooms and even though the rain soon stopped, the light remained very poor and in total twenty three overs were lost.
Durham's man of the day was Michael Di Venuto who almost batted through the shortened day only to be out for 132 just before the close. Adams was particularly impressive for Notts and his four wickets were well deserved.
In fifth place in the table at the start of this match last year's champion's are probably resigned to a mid table position this campaign but any one of the four teams above them could take the pennant and of course the current match at Liverpool, now in its third day, is crucial. As I write Lancashire lead The Bears by 190 runs with seven second innings wickets still to fall and could set a very difficult last day's target for the visitors.Somerset, who earlier today were in a dire position against Sussex, have been rescued by Buttler and may well continue their good run of form which has gone a long way to offset their poor start to the season.At the other end Yorkshire appear to have put themselves in a position where they should at least deny Hampshire their first victory of the season.
Yorkshire are the odd men out in the top division at the end of the season for they will complete their programme before the last round of matches. Let us hope that during that week all their followers will be able to relax and take a purely academic interest in Durham v Worcestershire and Hampshire v Warwickshire.