Somerset’s Summer

County Championship Division 1. Somerset v Essex Day 3 Talk about famous last words! I can hear the rain beating a tattoo on my bedroom window as I wake.  This was not how it was supposed to be.  I had blithely assumed that a full day’s play was in prospect.  Instead, with the rain still falling as I arrive at the County Ground, it is clear that we are in for a substantial delay. Parliament may or may not be prorogued again. The cricket certainly has been. The first pitch inspection is at 11, by which time it has stopped raining, but the outfield looks distinctly soggy.  The two, sometimes all three umpires, Messrs Bailey, Wharf and Banton, prod, poke and suck their teeth as they patrol the used pitches and the more obviously wet patches of outfield. They speak to Head Groundsman Simon Lee but, as far as I can see, no-one else.  Another inspection at 12 is the eventual PA announcement. Nothing added by way of explanation or prognosis, of course. By 12, i...

County Championship Division 1  Somerset v Essex Somerset 203 all out. Essex 25/0 (11 overs) Day 2 It is sluicing down as I leave Langport to drive to Taunton at 9.15.  The forecast on the BBC Weather app is anything but encouraging.  Given the sheer volume of rainfall - the rain-gauge in my garden showing 20 mm overnight - it seems unlikely that the ground will be fit to play much before early afternoon, even if the rain stops, and by that time, according to the BBC, the chances are that it will be raining again. But such gloomy calculations failed to take into account two factors:  first, that the BBC forecast proves, as is so often the case, to be overly pessimistic; second, the water-shifting properties of the County Ground's drainage system and the Herculean efforts Mopping up of Head Groundsman Simon Lee and his team.  By 11 o'clock, when the umpires go out to inspect, the rain has stopped, the surplus water has been mopped, the wettest pa...

County Championship Division 1 Somerset v Essex. Day one The weather is fine as I leave Langport at 8.30 on Monday morning for what is, indisputably, the Championship decider, but the forecast is grim.  It is hard to see how Somerset are going to be able to take the 20 Essex wickets they need in the intervals between the heavy rain, light rain, showers and thundery showers that we are promised over the course of the next four days, and expectations are moderated accordingly. But at least Tom Abell wins the toss and Somerset can bat first.  The only scenario that could reasonably end in the win we need is runs on the board, and then lots of Essex wickets, with or without Somerset having to bat again. The pitch, which is the same one used for a World Cup game and the Women's Ashes Test, looks bare of grass. There's not much doubt that it will take spin - hopefully not too extravagantly, given that Somerset still have a final warning hanging over them from last season's...

September 16-18 County Championship Division 1. Hampshire v Somerset Hampshire 196 and 226; Somerset 142 and 144. Hampshire win by 136 runs Day One I have two confessions to make, as play gets under way at the Ageas Bowl on a murky Monday morning.  The first is that Somerset winning the County Championship would mean more to me than England winning the Ashes, or even the World Cup.  Either of those two latter triumphs can be secured every four years.  Somerset have not won the Championship in 118 attempts spanning 127 years.  In my sixty-odd years of following their fortunes like a devoted Springer Spaniel, they have - agonisingly - been runners-up on four occasions, the closest and most painful being the fiasco in 2010 when Lancashire as good as gifted the thing to Notts.  That still hurts. My second confession is that, in my heart of hearts, if Somerset are indeed going to win the Championship, I would rather they saved their/our moment of triumph unti...

September 10 - 12.  County Championship Division 1: Somerset v Yorkshire Somerset win by 298 runs Day one Airey Point It seems a long time since Somerset's last game, but there have been plenty of comings and goings in the meantime.  Azhar Ali, as popular as ever with his team-mates even if the runs rather dried up, has been recalled by Pakistan and the Indian opening batsman Murali Vijay, signed in his place for the final three Championship matches.  He looks like quite a catch, averaging over 42 in the first-class cricket.  But when I look at his performance for India in last year's test series in England, the picture isn't quite so encouraging:  26 runs in four innings, including a pair at Lord's, after which he was dropped. Not sure how he'll cope with the moving ball on sporting wickets in an English September. I presume that Andrew Cornish must have had a say in the decision to sign Murali, in what turned out to be one of his final acts as Chie...

Vitality Blast Somerset v Middlesex Somerset 226; Middlesex 227/4 in 17 overs. Middlesex win by six wickets The equation as Somerset go into their final game in the South Group is, for once, simple enough:  win and we qualify, lose and we're out.  Other results are only of significance in terms of who and where we might play in the quarter finals. Beating Middlesex will not be easy. They have seven international cricketers in their ranks, including AB de Villiers and Eoin Morgan, with 568 games and 13,653 runs between them in T20 cricket. So I can't say I'm particularly optimistic as I arrive on yet another gloriously sunny afternoon, especially as Somerset have chosen an almost unchanged squad, the inclusion of Lewis Gregory, who hadn't been expected to be fit after his foot injury until the Yorkshire game in the Championship, being the only surprise.  So it looks like the same fragile middle-order and the same inconsistent set of bowlers. Peter Trego is at the ...