My tour of the East Midlands continued on Wednesday 29th March with a visit to what is now known as the Fischer county ground, otherwise Grace Road, Leicester. The home county were into the second day of their three day game with near neighbours Loughborough University. In a shortened day yesterday the county side were bowled out for 194 and the visitors closed on 20-0 when bad light intervened. Basil Akram, who is a consistently good all rounder, took 5-54 and a newcomer Ben Ladd-Gibbon from Dorset took 3-47.
Grace Road, Leicester - view from the pavilion
Quite a few changes at Grace Road since my last visit some years ago, both to the ground itself and certainly to the playing staff. They have an Australian captain, Mark Cosgrove and a South African coach, Pierre de Bruyn. The playing staff now includes at least three former Lancastrians in Paul Horton, Harry Dearden and Gavin Griffiths.
The latest recruit is James Burke, a Devonian on loan from Surrey.
Grace Road, Leicester - view from the Bennett end
Griffiths it was who took the first wicket when he had Evans leg before but the players had to leave the field due to bad light after only twenty minutes play. This was a testing time for new umpire James Middlebrook, a new addition to the reserve list this season, but the long half hour delay before play eventually resumed was probably more down to his colleague, the more senior man Steve O'Shaughnessy (yet another Lancastrian of course).
The umpires stride out after a long delay
The two left handers Hasan Azad and James Bracey, from Gloucestershire, both looked quite comfortable and put on a partnership of eighty seven, with Bracey doing most of the scoring before he was caught at mid off by Horton off the bowling of young off spinner Sayer for a confident fifty six. Another fifty partnership between Azad and Kumar, who made a very useful 34, suggested Loughborough might well run up a big lead. However two lbw decisions changed the situation somewhat with Kumar lbw Griffiths and White, possibly the star batsman from Middlesex, lbw to veteran Charlie Shreck for just seven. So 162-2 had become 175-4 at the close.
Two further interruptions for bad light made it yet another truncated day and Hasan Azad who batted throughout all the fifty four overs of the day had taken his overnight score of seven to just fifty nine at the close. He had certainly held up one end while the other batsmen got on with the business of scoring runs. So a disappointing day for the smallish crowd, many of whom took advantage of watching the cricket behind glass in The Meet as the wicket was well over to that side of the ground.
Leicestershire 1903 - Tom Emmett of Yorkshire is the coach extreme left back row
Still we enjoyed the pleasant and perhaps old fashioned atmosphere of cricket played at a leisurely pace away from all the hurly burly of the newer forms of the game, which seem to get all the publicity. The sun did shine for much of the day but the strong southerly wind never relented.
Next morning the weather again delayed things with a short sharp shower but play did eventually got underway after what appeared to be an interminable delay, with Azad again plodding along as if this was a five day match instead of the last day of three. Fortunately the admirable Akram after a slow start began to hit the ball and scored six fours and one six in his forty four. Azad's marathon innings of eighty came to an end after five hours at the crease just before lunch to everyone's relief. 248-5 at lunch with a comfortable lead for the students.
The view from the Meet
At this point after an excellent lunch in the Charles Palmer suite, we decided to head for home and to call in at Loughborough University, to see how their second eleven were progressing against Notts 2nd XI. First of all we called in to see the old Leicester county ground in Aylestone road, now the home of Leicester Electricity cricket club.
Aylestone Road cricket ground, Leicester
We were worried that the game could have been all over by our arrival soon after two o'clock as Notts had clocked up a huge score the previous day and an innings victory for them looked on the cards. Play was still in progress but with seven university second innings wickets having fallen the end seemed to be nigh. One batsman had other ideas and hit a huge straight six over our heads into the adjoining buildings as well as several other hearty blows. It seemed only a matter of time before he would be out, so off we went.
Play in progress at Loughborough University
Later that evening I saw a short note on twitter to say Loughborough had not only managed to get a lead but had set Notts 72 runs to win in only eight overs, which they got with eight wickets down. So a very exciting finish which we missed. Sadly the scorer had problems forwarding the full details to cricket archive and no report on day three has so far appeared on the Notts website, which covered the first two days.
I will update when full details become available, but understand the young man we saw hitting the ball was Matthew Stiddard, who scored a century.
Chance for Loughborough to score 15 runs if the ball hits all three helmets.
No comments:
Post a Comment