As I write this I am tending to my sun burnt nose!! With the way the weather has been over the last weekend it is hard to believe it is still early April. All my complaints and moans about cricket starting too early over here have been blown out of the water by the best pre-season weather known to me in all my years in the game. An obvious plus to this good weather is all the pre-season work on the ground went better than one could imagine. It makes such a difference to the spirits of the groundstaff when you know you're not going to be coming in and mopping up water off a couple of 100ft by 100ft sheets so as you can get some work done on the squares before the next rain shower comes. In my short time that I have been here I've never known us to be this far ahead, it feels like mid-July. Saying that, my next blog will be all about the wettest April in history now that I've put the 'commenators curse' on it!!!!
A result of the good weather has been excellent pitches and practise facilities for the players. They had two practise games, 2 two-day games against Surrey and Middlesex, accompanied by the usual full squad training sessions within and around these games. We did have some typical 'precious player' behaviour in our game against Middlesex, though I hasten to add it wasn't from our team. We were having our afternoon break when the players walked off the field, we presumed bad light or an early tea break, the hours of play aren't really set in stone in the practise games. I come out to see the Middlesex bowling coach and their England opening bowler practising on the match pitch. I go out and ask whats happening and he says the game has been called off!!! Bear in mind that it is still April so the outfield and surrounding square aren't as dry as it would be in the middle of the summer, but they were not wet. He said that he saw nothing wrong with the conditions, so much so that Steven Finn continued to bowl after the game for half an hour!! I'm sure they will cite that they are scared of losing players to injury early in the season etc etc but if their number 1 bowler, and I presume hes their 'prize asset', comes out and bowls it makes a bit of a mockery of the situation. I sometimes wonder do cricketers realise they are in an entertainment business........
So then we moved into our first County Championship game against a highly fancied Durham team. With us having a lengthy injury list (Michael Carberry, Kabir Ali, Imran Tahir, Dimi Mascarenhas to name a few) we opted for no pitch tinkering and were requested to produce the best possible pitch. Thank you I said! For this we went to the best pitch on the square, pitch number 5. When the square was originally constructed the County agreed to lay one 'trial pitch' for the ECB. It was the same soil type as the rest of the square with the exception of having a higher percentage of sand in it. This was hoped to encourage spin as the game went on, but the outcome was a good hard surface that was excellent to bat on at all times, so much so that we have already re-laid the middle six pitches with the same type of soil, and over time the whole square will be re-laid to the same specifications.
The combination of pitch 5 and the excellent weather resulted in a great looking pitch for the first Championship game. It was a must win toss, which we didn't win!! With the sun beating down any early morning moisture assisting the seamers was soon gone and we were made to toil and Durham finished the day on a very healthy 413 for 6, and ended up on 473 all out. We were on the back foot from that stage onwards. It is almost unheard of to win a game from this position. Despite our middle order all getting decent starts, no-one kicked on to give us the big 100 we needed to make life comfortable for us. We were bowled out for 294 but Durham didn't enforce the follow-on, probably thinking they wanted to bowl last on a wearing pitch. So they batted us out of the game, leaving us a mammoth 489 in 116 overs. That would have been an awesome chase!! Needless to say we didn't really go for it, it was a more 'see what position we get in to' innings. Apart from a couple of hiccups we comfortably batted out the last day to finish on 345 for 6.
So it was an eventful game. 3 hundreds, loads of runs, not many wickets, and even a chance of seeing 6 sixes in an over when young Ben Stokes hit Liam Dawson for 5 sixes in a row only to fail on the final ball of the over to hit the 6th six. When I saw Liam he said with a smile on his face that he was sort of disappointed not to get into the record books!! I wonder if Angus Dunlop felt the same when Allan Border did the same to him!!!!!
The umpires gave the pitch their top mark 'very good'. I suppose if I was being critical I think it lacked a little bit in seam movement. It was probably a bit flat but there was decent pace and carry, and spin towards the end. Its everything they look for. When I was watching the last session I see the 'keeper standing 60 feet back taking Liam Plunketts bouncers over his head. That's decent pace, but then I see in one of the newspapers that they said the pitch was 'easy paced' and got slower as the game went on! This is why I don't read the papers, even when things do go well!!!
And so we move on. The lads are away for the next week in Trent Bridge and then its back to the Rose Bowl for our first Pro40 game against Warwickshire which will hopefully contain two of our World Cup heroes, Boyd and Purdy.
If anyone has any questions, or topics they would like me to discuss, feel free to leave a comment, or follow me on Twitter @Karl_McDermott for regular pictures and comments.
