Dying the death

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, and it had a bar billiards table!

London Welsh may not be the club it once was, but the ground still provides a pleasant, suburban setting for a game of cricket, surrounded as it is by villas and trees, with the entire scene over-looked by the Great Pagoda, just up the road in Kew Gardens. A full house, of 4,000 spectators, is promised.  Mark says he would rather be at Lord’s. I beg to differ. I enjoy out-ground cricket, although it has to be said that with stars on offer like AB de Villiers, Eoin Morgan, Babar Azam and Tom Banton, this particular game certainly deserves a bigger audience, especially - as we soon learned from Twitter - given that the Middlesex live stream was a total disaster.
"Tails"

I’m out in the middle for the toss. Tom Abell calls tails, correctly, and opts to bowl.  It’s a small ground, and the pitch looks dry and hard, under a patchy covering of grass.  I guess that defending a score will be difficult, especially on what looks like a horribly rough outfield - the legacy, no doubt, of all that winter rugby.

Middlesex are at full strength, with a batting line up featuring Eoin Morgan as well as de Villiers,  and a strong and varied bowling attack which includes the seam of Steven Finn, Tom Helm and Toby Roland-Jones, and the spin of the Afghani off-spinner Mujeeb ur-Rahman and Nathan Sowter.  Mark and Kevin both expect the spinners to be the more dangerous on this pitch.

The pitch 

As has been the pattern in this T20 campaign, Somerset’s bowling starts promisingly.  Paul Stirling and Dawid Malan take only 21 off the first four overs:  one each from Taylor, Waller and the Overtons, as is the Somerset way.  But the Middlesex openers are biding their time, picking up the pace of the pitch, and when the attack comes, so the bowling gradually crumbles.  De Villiers arrives in the 9th over when Craig Overton has Stirling caught by Lammonby. His third ball disappears over the heads of the crowd for six. 

Max Waller briefly stems the flow, and then Abell tosses the ball to Tom Lammonby, at 19, in only his fifth game, entrusted with the task of somehow either subduing or dismissing one of the most powerful batsmen in the world.  Under the circs, he does pretty well.  Sure, de Villiers hits him for a straight six into the hedge behind our commentary tent, but with the first ball of his second over, he persuades Malan to mis-hit into the safe hands of Abell at mid-off, and just four runs accrue from the remaining five balls. Roelof van der Merwe is similarly economical in his next over, so that after 14 Middlesex have only 128/2 on the board.
Craig Overton bowling to Paul Stirling before Middlesex got away

But that, I’m afraid, is Somerset’s high water mark with the ball.  Lammonby does have Morgan caught in his next over, but only after he’s been hit for two enormous sixes.  There’s no stopping de Villiers now.  With John Simpson joining in the fun, sixes seem to be raining down on or usually over the crowd.  The last four overs cost 62 runs, including 17 off the 20th, bowled by our star overseas fast bowler, whose final analysis reads 4/0/56/1.  De Villiers finishes on 88 from 35 balls.  It has been a master-class.  But yet again, it looks like the death overs have sounded the death-knell for Somerset hopes.

It certainly looks that way when Babar Azam, the Blast’s top scorer, averaging 65.75 at a strike rate of 152,  is bamboozled and bowled by ur-Rahman.  James Hildreth is the new batsman and it rapidly becomes apparent that he isn’t in the mood either to accept defeat or to play second fiddle to young Banton. He drives his second ball for four past mid-off with what, for me, is as handsome a shot as anything we’ve seen from de Villiers, and he and Banton take the attack to Middlesex with a vengeance.

By the end of the powerplay, after a Roland-Jones over costing 18, Somerset are 63/1, 14 ahead of Middlesex at the same stage, and the first four balls of the 7th, bowled by Steven Finn, go for another 16. Somerset are winning!  Spoke too soon. Finn tries a slower one, Hildreth spots it, waits for it, but succeeds only in under-edging it into his stumps.

But Banton is still there, even though Mark Davis has warned of the risks he is taking in trying to hit the ball square of the wicket with his favourite sweeps. The Australian born leg-spinner Nathan Sowter comes into the attack. True to form, Banton goes to sweep his second ball, and the LBW verdict is a formality.

And that, I am sorry to say, marks the end of Somerset’s challenge.  Byrom, Lammonby, van der Merwe and the Overtons all come and go in the next six overs, all swinging from the hip,  none of them having bothered to have a look at the bowling or pick up the pace of the pitch and none of them reaching double figures. The infuriating thing is that they didn’t need to bat like that.  The asking rate had come down to only just over 10 when Hildreth was out, a rate which we knew was comfortably achievable on this small ground, provided the spinners were treated with respect, as Tom Abell proceeded to demonstrate in one of his best T20 innings.  There is time for some West Indian ‘smiting’ from Jerome Taylor to lighten the gloom, but when Waller is run out, slipping when sent back, it’s all over, two balls into the 18th over.

I interview a stern-faced Tom Abell afterwards.  He agrees with me (a) that the middle order didn’t need to bat like that and (b) that Somerset’s bowling, at the death especially, is just not good enough. 

The figures bear that out. This is what the last four overs have cost Somerset in this season’s Blast to date and as a percentage of the opposition’s total::

Glamorgan:  46; 25.5%
Kent: 41;  24.8%
Hampshire:  57; 32.7%
Sussex:  45; 24.7%
Surrey:  56; 27.6%
Middlesex:  62; 28.8%

Overall average:  51; 27.4%

So, Somerset’s last four overs have gone for an average of 12.75 runs per over, amounting to 27.4% of the total number of runs scored against us, as compared with the 20% which four overs out of 20 represents. It is a handicap which the most brilliant batting side in the country would struggle to overcome, and it’s no wonder that, in four games out of six, it has proved too much.

Surely it is time for the likes of Jack Brooks, Josh Davey and Tim Groenewald to be given their chance.  

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