Somerset’s Summer

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 ...

Vitality Blast T20  Surrey v Somerset Somerset 157/9;  Surrey 158/4 in 17.3 overs.  Surrey win by six wickets I always seem to have problems getting to the Oval.  This time, the A303 is effectively blocked between the Podimore and Hazelgrove roundabouts, so I decide to head up the A37, turn right at Lydford and rejoin the A303 at Wincanton.  Good plan. Only one problem. The A371 between Castle Cary and Wincanton is closed.  So it's a tortuous drive across country via Wyke Champflower (where the road signs are in English and Polish, presumably for the benefit of the milk tanker drivers) and Bruton.  By the time I reach the dual carriageway beyond Wincanton, I've already been on the road for more than an hour, and there's still Stonehenge (which lived up to its reputation) to come.  I pull into a lay-by to check the times of trains from Basingstoke, only to discover that they all have "this service is subject to a bulletin" against them, the...

My goodness it is hot as I arrive at the CACG!  I can feel the sweat running down the back of my neck as I make my way up to our - thankfully air-conditioned - commentary box, where BBC Wales' Nick Webb is already in residence.  He is gloomy as to Glamorgan's prospects of recording a first win in this season's Blast. "We're very much focusing on promotion in the Championship, but even that's come off the rails a bit after the result at Colwyn Bay" (where Glamorgan were hammered by Lancashire by an innings and plenty).  Mark Davis, who used to travel into school in Bridgwater on the same bus as my wife Claire,  is our summariser and his first captain at Somerset, Brian Rose, drops by to say hello just before the start. We are a bit of a cricketing family, down in Somerset! The toss.  Sometimes it pays to lose Glamorgan's Colin Ingram wins the toss and, much to my relief, elects to field. Four out of Somerset's five wins have come from batting ...

August 23. Vitality Blast T20.  Gloucestershire v Somerset Gloucestershire 189/4.  Somerset 164 all out in 19.3 overs. Gloucestershire win by 25 runs A fresh pitch at Bristol - a rare sight indeed! To Bristol, in the sunshine, with the roof down, through the very heart of Somerset. My journey is as delightfully arcadian as it is uninterrupted, as I listen to the traffic reports of chaos and congestion on the M5.  Having allowed two hours for the journey, I arrive, feeling smug, by twenty past four. The Cider Derby always produces that extra frisson of excitement, the bittersweet of Somerset taking on the bittersharp of Gloucestershire, styles of cider seeming somehow to match the characters of the two counties. Having spotted that Dom Bess has been recalled from Yorkshire and features in the Somerset squad, I assume that we're in for the usual slow, sticky, used Bristol pitch and that Somerset will play three spinners.  But no.  Jason Kerr informs me ...

County Championship Division 1  Warwickshire v Somerset Day 4 Warwickshire 419 and 146; Somerset 308 and 258/5.  Somerset (21 pts) win by five wickets It is a fine, breezy, mostly sunny morning in leafy Edgbaston; a morning for batting, to be sure. Somerset need exactly 250 more runs to keep their Championship campaign on track, with all wickets standing.  I reckon that the combination of Jeetan Patel and a fourth day pitch makes Warwickshire the favourites, but one of my co-commentators, Phil Britt, who runs the Warwickshire Cricket Museum and knows vastly more about his county's cricket than I do, has Somerset as the likely winners. But, with a minimum of 96 overs to be bowled and the weather set fair, we are going to get a definite result, one way or the other. Steve Davies and Tom Abell start confidently,  It is beginning to look as if Hildreth, for only the second time this season,  will not be required to walk out to bat before the end of the 12th ov...

County Championship Division 1. Warwickshire v Somerset. Day 3 Warwickshire 419 and 146; Somerset 308 and 8/0 Vic Marks likes to recall how Brian Rose, as captain of Somerset, would give the same team talk before every big game.  “This”, he would announce to his troops, “is the biggest day in Somerset’s cricket history.” The day in prospect as I write maybe doesn’t quite qualify for such hyperbole, but it does certainly have the potential to make or mar Somerset’s 2019 County Championship campaign.  Essex having rolled Kent over for 40 in the second innings down at Canterbury, and knocked off the 153 they needed to win, it means that Somerset will also need to win if they are to keep pace at the top of the table.  Defeat won’t destroy their challenge, but it would leave it holed below the waterline. But I suppose the remarkable thing is that we are even in a position to talk about winning, when you consider that less than an hour into yesterday’s play, Somerset we...

Almost next door to my hotel, the Plough and Harrow in Hagley Road, is the Birmingham Oratory, which will forever be associated with Cardinal John Henry Newman, the most influential Roman Catholic theologian that this country has ever produced.  Walking past the Oratory on my way to the newsagents this morning, I remembered the first line of Newman’s most famous hymn: “Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom” and thought how appropriate it is for the role that Steve Davies played for Somerset, yesterday afternoon. He did indeed lead, in the sense both of opening the innings with Tom Abell, an experiment which I don’t doubt will be repeated, and of top-scoring, with 89 not out. As for the encircling gloom, just look at the score!  He is also,  if this is not stretching the analogy too far, a kindly batsman, in that he does not bludgeon the ball to the boundary so much almost as caressing it on its way.  There is no more elegant stroke-maker in the game.  H...

It is a sunny, breezy morning, but as I arrive at Edgbaston, it doesn’t have the feel of one of the most important games - for both sides - in the country’s most prestigious cricket competition:  an almost pathetically small crowd, scattered thinly around Edgbaston’s all-embracing stands, a pitch so far over to one side of the ground that the boundary to the Hollies stand is barely 50 yards, and a vast media centre which, 15 minutes before the start of play, has precisely one occupant, Somerset’s website and social media guru, Ben Warren.  I know there’s a Test match going on down the road in London, but this is ridiculous. Somerset are without their two best bowlers and Tom Abell loses the toss.The shadow of Jeetan Patel in the fourth innings already looms over our chances of securing a much-needed win.  But the wicket of Dominic Sibley, the Championship’s leading run-scorer with 940 to his name, in just the second over, smartly caught in the gully by Roelof van der Me...

August 16  Vitality Blast T20  Somerset v Gloucestershire Match abandoned They've been forecasting heavy rain for Friday evening since last week-end and it has been raining steadily all day, with no sign of any respite, so the abandonment comes as no surprise.  It's a huge shame, for the home T20 against Peter Trego's "filthy Glosters" (he doesn't really mean it!) in front of a full house at Taunton is one of the season's great occasions. But full marks to the club and the umpires for calling it off early, so saving the supporters of both sides some thousands of wasted journeys. Earlier in the day, the news came through that Azhar Ali is to return early to Pakistan, at the behest of the Pakistan Cricket Board. Registration issues meant that (a) he wasn't due to play in the Championship game against Warwickshire, starting on Sunday, with Babar Azam taking his place and (b) that if he were to play in the home game v Yorkshire in September, which he...

If Babar doesn't get you.......... Vitality Blast T20  Somerset v Kent Somerset 206; Kent 151 all out in 18.4 overs. Somerset win by 55 runs Whoever is responsible for choosing the music for Somerset's home T20 games does show a striking lack of forethought and originality.  The obvious choice for this evening, as the teams walk out, would have been Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night", given that after two good wins on the bounce, and Babar Azam in such devastating form, Somerset hopes of finally lowering Kent's colours after 11 successive T20 defeats are sky-high. But no, it's just the usual mash-up. Nothing to amuse or inspire. Pity. As I arrive, Western Storm's captain Heather Knight is just putting the finishing touches to her team's victory over Lancashire Thunder, which is a good deal more comfortable than 'with three balls to spare' would suggest.  There is already a good crowd in the CACG, and Sky television are here to ...

Storm Somerset August 9.  Vitality Blast T20.  Hampshire v Somerset Somerset 202; Hampshire 69/6 12.1 overs. Somerset win by 63 runs (DLS) God, how I hate away T20 games on Friday evenings.  If it's not the M5 that's clogged on the way there, it's the M3 or the M25, and the chances are that one them will be closed on the way back for re-surfacing or some such.  This afternoon, it's the A303 which is the problem.  After consulting various traffic apps, I decide to leave Langport at just after 3, to collect Mark Davis at Martock, with the aim of getting to the Ageas Bowl at around 6 for a 7 o'clock start. It is a journey that under normal circumstances would take about an hour and three quarters, so I'm allowing over an hour for contingencies.  We reach our destination at 6.40, which means a mad dash through the Hilton Hotel lobbies and lifts to the commentary gantry on the third floor, where I find a maze of wires, one of which presumably will connect ...

Fortress Chelmsford sacked August 7 Vitality Blast T20   Essex v Somerset Somerset 225/6; Essex 111 all out.    Somerset win by 114 runs I always have slightly mixed feelings about going to Chelmsford. On the downside is the fact that it’s not just a long way (180 miles from Langport, give or take), but getting there means negotiating almost exactly half of the M25, not so much a road to Hell as Hell itself. Chelmsford is for the most part a rather plain town-turned city and Somerset have lost more games than they’ve won here since I started going regularly ten years ago. On the other hand the Cloud FM County Ground, as it is now known, is a proper cricket ground, the commentary position is excellent, the BBC Essex commentators are always welcoming and helpful and the crowd, whilst probably the most partisan on the circuit, do give floodlit games here a very special atmosphere.   The excitement crackles in the air around the ground as if the whole p...

August 7. Vitality Blast T20.  Middlesex v Somerset at Richmond Middlesex 215; Somerset 180 all out in 18.2 overs.  Middlesex win by 35 runs I’m driving Mark Davis up to Old Deer Park in Richmond for the Middlesex game, where we'll be sharing commentary with BBC Radio London's Kevin Hand. It's a warm cloudy day, the roads are busy but not clogged and we're both looking forward to watching AB de Villiers bat.  And after Friday evening's excitements, Somerset must be in with a fighting chance, even against as strong and versatile a side as Middlesex. Old Deer Park is where London Welsh play their rugby.  When I lived in London in the early 70s, they were one of the strongest clubs in the land, featuring greats like John Dawes, JPR Williams, John Taylor and Gerald Davies. I got to know them quite by chance, at the Carpenters Arms in Whitfield St, all of us drawn there on Saturday nights by what I always reckoned was the best Draught Bass to be found in London...