On a sunny but breezy morning yesterday I made my first visit to The Riverside for more than three weeks for the opening day of a four day test match between England Under 19 and their Australian counterparts. The crowd was disappointingly sparse and one wonders what effort has been made to publicise the match, but never mind the quantity feel the width for in the south west corner an eclectic crowd of pcws assembled, pcws whose knowledge extended to the composition of the Max Jaffa trio, that Dickie Henderson's wife was a contortionist, Ullswater United and occasionally matters of a cricketing nature. Our Hartlepool correspondent pointed out an interesting link to the equivalent match played at ground in 1999, namely that England's captain sixteen years ago, Michael Gough, is one of the umpires for this match.
Under Gough's charge that day were future England players, Ian Bell, Michael Carberry, James Foster and Richard Dawson and in the Australian XI were Michael Clarke, Adam Voges and Mitchell Johnson. Gough's fellow umpire this week is Alex Wharf and so at 11:00 two six feet five men in white coats took the field as Jewell and Pattinson opened for Australia. They found the opening overs from Mahmood and Warner difficult to negotiate and Pattinson was caught behind off Mahmood with the score at 2 but there then followed a century partnership between Jewell and Gauci and then another of 77 between Gauci and Doran. Much has been heard of the Sydneysider Jake Doran and it was a severe blow to England when he was put down at square leg off the ball that gave him his first run. He had another 102 to his name before he was finally out with the score at 343 for 6.
England skipper Hasseb Hameed was not frightened to give leg spinner Parkinson plenty of work and he finished the day with five wickets for 85 off 30.3 overs. Stumps were pulled when he had Jyhe(sic) Richardson caught by Jared Warner to leave Australia in the commanding position of 373 for 8
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