First live cricket of the season

 Posted by Tony Hutton

Having enviously watched pre-season games going on in constant sunshine from the Midlands and the south of England on live streaming, it was a great relief to get our first live cricket of the season on Sunday. It was day two of a pre-season friendly between Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire at Trent Bridge. With the clocks having gone forward during the evening, Sunday morning proved an almost traffic free journey south to enable us to have our morning coffee in the Trent Bridge Long Room well before play started.

Warwickshire take the field at Trent Bridge.

The sunshine of the previous week had given way to cloudy skies with a slight chill in the air during the morning session, but the sun reappeared during the afternoon session. As ever the rules of these pre-season matches seem to be made up as the game goes along and it was explained over the public address that after yesterday's game, when Warwickshire declared after 57.2 overs and Notts then had 30 overs, a similar format would take place in a new game today.

The teams line up, with a few more names added later.

So Nottinghamshire started a new innings and batted for 60 overs to be followed by 28 overs for the visitors before play ended. All rather strange with players coming and going or not re-appearing and both sides changing wicketkeepers during the day. All very interesting nevertheless with a certain amount of detective work necessary to keep up with all this. However the newly arrived second eleven annual proved excellent ammunition as ever in identifying players we had not seen before.

Play get's underway at Trent Bridge.

Slater and Hameed had scored runs yesterday so were not given a second knock, but Duckett who had made 42 not out yesterday, carried on for ten more overs before retiring out on 28. Clarke played a rather  tedious innings of 28 before being dismissed by the England Under 19 spinner Jacob Bethell, who bowled a very tidy spell of fourteen overs. Lyndon James, a rare local lad, got more of a move on with a more aggressive 42 before retiring. Club captain Steven Mullaney started very slowly but eventually got to 50 just before the end of the innings declaration on 192-5.

Warwickshire bobble hats were popular with the support staff.

One or two newcomers had appeared in the Warwickshire ranks, Chris Benjamin taking over as wicketkeeper from Burgess (who was wearing Sibley's shirt) and Bulpitt a left arm seamer (wearing Sidebottom's shirt and later Garrett's sweater), joined the attack. Another complete newcomer to us was Zaman Akhter, another left arm seam bowler, who has played one first class match for Oxford University, games for Cambridgeshire in the National Counties and for the England XI which played in a European T10 competition. Hard to keep up with all this I know!

The sun appeared during the afternoon session.

However, during the late afternoon sunshine the game drifted to a predictable draw, with Warwickshire making 115-3. The major contributors being Burgess, with some good hitting in his 60, before retiring and the opening bat Rob Yates, who had impressed us several times in the past, with 38 not out. A mixed bag of Nottinghamshire bowlers all bowled about five overs each, including a newcomer from Somerset in James Hayes. Luke Fletcher and Brett Hutton the two main seam bowlers were rested after playing in the three day game with Loughborough University last week.

Best part of the day. Trent Bridge at it's best.

One change of personnel we were not aware of until later was that Nottinghamshire's wicketkeeping duties were taken over by a young man called Dane Schadendorf, from Zimbabwe, in place of Tom Moores. Dane is the younger brother of Jayden Schadendorf, who has played for Notts seconds since 2019.

A sparse crowd of course for a match with little purpose only to give everyone involved some match practice before the more serious business starts, but the diehards who did attend all enjoyed renewing the sights and sounds of county cricket. Whatever the pundits and prophets of gloom may say, after another England dismal performance in the West Indies, county cricket is still the bedrock of cricket in this country and long may it continue.