Tag: Graham Napier

Lancashire v Essex preview

Lancashire have their third home match in four games this week as they play Essex at Old Trafford starting on Tuesday. Both teams got their first win of the season last week and both in fairly dramatic fashion, so both will be looking to continue their momentum.

Lancashire will have two enforced changes from the attack that managed to defend 154 at Colwyn Bay last week. Jimmy Anderson will return to England duty ahead of next week’s first Test against New Zealand and Simon Kerrigan will be with the England Lions as they play a New Zealand XI starting on the ninth. I expect Wayne White will return to the side after he made a good start to his Lancashire career against Worcestershire and Stephen Parry looks likely to replace Kerrigan. Although this is an obviously weaker attack, it is still one capable of taking wickets. The main spearheads of Glen Chapple and Kyle Hogg will still be present and White certainly poses an attacking threat. Those three will be backed up by Parry, who has generally been playing in the shorter forms, and Luke Procter whose bowling has been getting more incisive. Although it has been a bit difficult to take wickets at Old Trafford so far this season, I don’t think this attack will struggle any more than the others have done.

Lancashire’s top six should be unchanged; although they had a poor match at Colwyn Bay, they have been very good in the other two matches and twice put Lancashire into winning positions. Lancashire bat very deep, as Hogg showed at Colwyn Bay, but the upper and middle order have generally done well enough that this has not been needed. Ashwell Prince and Simon Katich in particular have been excellent. The only criticism that could be levelled is that they have not scored particularly quickly. Whilst there is no one who would prefer a quick 200 all out to a slow 450-7, it has hampered Lancashire’s ability to get batting bonus points and meant that when it has rained there has not been enough time left to force a result. Getting runs on the board is paramount, but if Lancashire can do it a little bit quicker in this match they will be better off than they have been.

Lancashire will be disappointed to see that Alastair Cook will be bolstering the Essex ranks. The visitors’ batting has been suspect at times this year, but having Cook at the top of the order will relieve a lot of the pressure on the middle order and Graham Napier has shown in each of their last two matches that they can recover from a pretty dire position. But at the same time that means that they have been in dire positions a lot and the Lancashire bowlers will be eying up the Essex middle order very keenly. There are a lot of single figure scores there and a lot of very quick collapses in the last couple of matches. The key for Lancashire will not only be to get into that position of strength, but to actually finish Essex off from there.

Lancashire may have to fight the weather again as well as Essex. The forecast for the first day is excellent; there is very little chance of rain and the temperature is supposed to get all the way up to 20°C. From there, however, there is a distinct chance of rain on the second and third days and it is supposed to get much colder as well. Lancashire’s best chance to win is probably to bat first, then try to score a bit quicker than they have done and get a good total on the board before spending the rest of the match trying to put the Essex batsmen under pressure. It is a tough ask, as it always is when overs are lost due to weather, and they have to get through Alastair Cook. But if they can get past Cook and Napier then the rest of Essex’s batting is flimsy enough that Lancs should have a very good chance to win even with the rain.

It’s very close, but I think Lancashire will win with a draw being the next most likely outcome. That’s not to rule out Essex who did well to bowl a solid Hampshire batting order out fairly cheaply last week, but much like when Lancashire played Kent I think a lot more will have to go Essex’s way for them to get into a winning position then it would for Lancs to do the same.

LV=CC week one roundup

In a pretty good start to the County Championship, six of the seven round one matches had positive results with only Kent’s trip to Headingley ending in a draw. The full results were:
Nottinghamshire beat Worcestershire by 92 runs
Somerset beat Middlesex by six wickets
Surrey beat Sussex by 86 runs
Derbyshire beat Northamptonshire by 202 runs
Essex beat Gloucestershire by an innings and 38 runs
Leicestershire beat Glamorgan by 52 runs
Yorkshire drew with Kent

I mostly listened to the Kent match this weekend (in the hope that the White Rose would lose) so I’m hoping that it is not a sign of things to come as I turn my attention to Lancashire from next week.

The Notts and Leics matches were similar, both times the home side lost the toss and were put into bat (which actually happened in six of the seven matches, Kent winning the toss and batting being the only exception). And in both matches they collapsed dramatically. In Leicester the hosts lost wickets to the first two balls of the season and were 1-3 at one point with each of their top three making ducks. The fact that they made it to 249 all out was a dramatic recovery then. Notts did not start out quite as badly, but they did not recover as well either and succumbed to 118 all out via 34-5. Both sides were able to instigate collapses in their opponents though, Glamorgan were at one point 34-7 en route to 124 all out and Worcestershire simply lost wickets at regular intervals in getting a first innings lead of 12. This is where the matches diverged sharply: Notts proceeded to bat Worcs out of the match with 403, whilst Leics collapsed to 110 all out. Both were enough, however.

Whilst I did not get to watch Yorkshire lose (I would have been pretty surprised if I had) I did get to see Kent rack up 537-9 against them before declaring. Amazingly, that included a ninth wicket stand of 157 after Kent had been 374-8. A century by Jonny Bairstow was not quite enough for Yorkshire to avoid the follow-on (though probably gives him an early lead in the race for number six), but an opening stand of 115 in the second innings mostly ended any hopes of a positive result in that match.

If I had to pick one match that I thought would be drawn, I would have guessed Somerset v Middlesex, after the start was badly delayed by rain. Somerset never let Middlesex build a big partnership in the first innings, though, and then their strong batting order got them a lead of 104. George Dockrell took 6-27 to give Somerset an easy target of 72 with plenty of time. They lost four wickets en route, but made it pretty easily in the end.

Surrey did not get much of a contribution from their batsmen, only three went past fifty in both innings, but a very good group performance from their bowlers made sure it was enough. Sussex were bowled out for 196 in the first innings and the only bright spot as they tried to chase 342 was 108 by Luke Wells. Once again Surrey’s bowlers kept them in check and shared the wickets around and Sussex never really looked like getting the runs.

Derbyshire’s match at the county ground against Northants was very close after the first innings. Derbyshire lead by 22 at that point on the back of 110 by Dan Redfern and 83 by Ross Whiteley. The rest of the batsmen contributed only 87 between them. The second innings was completely different, however. A Martin Guptill 137 anchored a score of 314-3 from Derbyshire and although Northants managed to bat until late on day four, they were bowled out for 134.

The most one sided match of the first round was at Chelmsford. Essex were put into bat and responded by scoring 364. One hundred thirty of those were from opener Billy Godleman and Gloucestershire simply had no response. They collapsed to 180 all out and were asked to follow-on. Second time around Graham Napier took 5-58 as Gloucestershire could only make 146 and succumbed to an innings defeat.

Four sides are still yet to play, but so far Somerset have the early lead in Division One with 22 points from their first match, whilst Essex lead the second tier with 23 points.