Posted by Tony Hutton
Yesterday possibly provided the earliest date yet for county cricket to get underway, when Somerset began a two day pre-season practice match with Worcestershire at Taunton. It has been possible to watch the live cricket courtesy of the Somerset website, which has been (and still is) showing a trial live streaming. It is emphasised that this is only a trial with a strangely positioned wide of mid-on camera in operation and no commentary, although distant sound effects from the middle can be heard.
Be that as it may, it is still quite an event to watch live cricket in England during the middle of March, we even had a glimpse of sunshine this morning. Worcestershire batted first yesterday and made a reasonable total of 305-5 in 60 overs. Rikki Wessels top scored with 101, with an amazing 24 fours, before retiring and Ross Whiteley a quickfire 79 not out with 12 fours and 3 sixes.
Somerset's innings ended around lunchtime today when they were bowled out for 176. Craig Overton, who captained the side made 43, after all the early batsmen had failed, but he was eventually overtaken by one of the four anonymous players at the end of the innings. These four were listed as A. Player, G. Player, Z. Player and Y. Player. It was later revealed that these four were batsmen who batted twice and it was Lammonby who got 44 not out at the end of the innings. Three wickets each for Leach and Pennington.
By early afternoon today Worcester were 70-2 in their second innings. Their opening pair of Fell and Dell having been split be Overton removing Dell lbw for 13. Haynes, a very promising young batsman, was also out lbw to Van der Merwe for 26 and one hopes this could well be a breakthrough season for him.
On Monday next, after Saturday's online A.G.M., Yorkshire will get underway with two different squads taking on Durham at Headingley and Middlesex at Merchant Taylor's School, Northwood in two separate two day friendlies. Both of course behind closed doors.
One other interesting development has been the announcement last week of the Lancashire second eleven fixtures and yesterday the Yorkshire second eleven fixtures appeared on the county website. Yorkshire will play twelve four day championship games and ten T20s. There has been considerable confusion as to when spectators will be admitted to second eleven games, but this has hopefully been made clear by a statement that if the lockdown timetable remains unchanged spectators will be admitted from May 17th as with first team cricket.
This sadly means that the four day game with Lancashire at Scarborough on Monday10th May will be behind closed doors, but hopefully the games with Notts at York starting on May 17th and Durham at Harrogate starting on 24th May will allow spectators in. T20 games take over for the month of June until another four day game at Weetwood against Warwickshire starts on 28th June.
During the month of July only one away game at the beginning of the month as the Royal London Cup will then feature many second eleven players due to some first teamers being absent for 'The Hundred'. There will then be two more four day games in August and two more in September, ending with a game with Worcestershire at Scarborough starting on 13th September. Let us just hope that all these things will come to pass with no more problems along the way.
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