Somerset's Summer - A View from the Commentary Box

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 place is charged with static electricity.

I arrive in good time - on my own.  We have searched in vain for a co-commentator prepared to make the trip, and the player I was hoping to enlist as expert summariser, Tim Groenewald, has been chosen to play, replacing Jamie Overton.  However, Dick Davies, one of the BBC Essex regulars, who knows as much about cricket in Essex as anyone, but who isn’t working this evening, kindly volunteers to step in.

It is a game that both sides need to win if they are to have a realistic chance of qualifying for the quarter finals, and the ground is full to bursting.

The toss at 'Fortress Chelmsford'

Tom Abell wins the toss and, for a change, opts to bat.  A good decision, I think.  It puts the onus on Somerset’s strength, their batting, and will mean that the bowlers will know what they’ve got to do. Mohammed Amir, who has recently, and sadly in my view, announced his retirement from test cricket at the age of just 27, opens the bowling and is driven handsomely back over his head for four by his Pakistan team-mate Babar Azam. 

But this quickly develops into another episode in the Tom Banton Show. Aaron Beard, who took 7/45 when Essex beat Somerset in the Championship here in June, is called up to bowl the second over.  Banton bides his time - for one ball. The next five go for 4,4,4,4,6!  The leg-spinner Adam Zampa and the giant left-arm seamer Paul Walter are treated with similar contempt. The ball is flying everywhere. The 50 comes up in the fourth over.  The crowd stunned into silence.

But then a twist. Banton goes to ramp Ravi Bopara, doesn’t get hold of it and is caught at short fine leg, whereupon James Hildreth turns his first ball straight into the hands of Walter at mid-wicket.  Are we, I wonder gloomily, in for a repeat of the Middlesex ‘up like the rocket, down like the stick’ scenario?  Tom Abell and Babar see to it that we are not, milking the good balls for ones and twos, and hitting the bad ones for boundaries.  Against some lacklustre bowling, they take the score along at a steady ten an over, without undue trouble or risk.  

At the halfway stage we are 97/2.  Simon Harmer’s second over, the 12^th, is savaged for 24, Abell belying his reputation as ‘not really a T20 batsman’ by hitting two big sixes, while Babar lands one in the river Cam behind our commentary box. Next stop, the North Sea!

Even when the pair of them go, the momentum is sustained, thanks initially to Eddie Byrom, who is badly dropped by Mohammed Amir, and then rubs it in by smashing him for two huge leg-side sixes, and, at the death, by Craig Overton, who silences the crowd with two massive blows in the final over, in which the hapless Beard concedes 20 runs. Somerset have added 59 in the last four overs. The death boot is on the other foot!

The required rate for Essex is 11.3 runs per over, attainable enough over a short burst, but surely impossible to sustain over the full 20?  It doesn’t look that way, as Tom Westley (how on earth did he get picked for England ahead of James Hildreth?!) and the South African slogger Cameron Delport get to work. And, my goodness, can Delport hit a cricket ball!  After finding his range, he fairly pulverises the last three balls of Jerome Taylor’s first over for four apiece.  After three overs, Essex have 30 on the board and the ball seems to be flying off the bat.  

Abell brings Groenewald on, for his first over in this year’s Blast.  His sixth ball is smashed by Delport waist high, travelling like a shell, to Abell at mid-off, who somehow clings on.  The danger man is gone. Cue Somerset rejoicing. 

Westley goes in the next over, top-edging Overton, Waller taking the catch.  Wheater and Lawrence threaten briefly, but as they fall further and further behind the asking rate, desperate measures are called for.  Two sixes come off the first four balls of Roelof van der Merwe’s first over, but with the fifth, he catches Wheater in two minds and a simple catch to Hildreth at backward point is the result.

Dick Davies and I are sharing the commentary box with the BBC Essex boys, whose commentary is being carried by the live stream.  I gather from Twitter that my shout of triumph as Hildreth took that catch almost drowned out the alternative, probably more subdued, version of events! Well, as I explained later, I did have rather more to shout about than they did!

Dan Lawrence is next to go, Overton charging a full 40 yards around the long-on boundary to take the catch at full pelt, tossing the ball triumphantly into the air in front of the silent crowd.  Lawrence departs with an ill-grace, pointing his bat accusingly at the celebrating Somerset fielders.  Had he been given a send-off perchance?  Dick Davies suggests that he is the sort of cricketer who rather invites one.

Essex fold rather feebly after that, van der Merwe picking up four more wickets, including three in one over, for his best career-best T20 figures of 5/32. When Waller bowls Mohammed Amir, it’s all over. Somerset winners by 114 runs. Essex crushed. The crowd hushed. Fortress Chelmsford left in ruins.

Roll on Roelof!

I talk to an understandably delighted Roelof van der Merwe afterwards.  He reckons that 225 was probably 30 or so better than par on that pitch, and agrees that the batsmen have learned the lessons from the Middlesex game by combining discretion with aggression to build on the initial Banton blitz, rather than wasting it.  

As I’m waiting to do the interview I hear the sad news that the world record held by another Somerset slow left-armer, Arul Suppiah, who took 6/5 against Glamorgan back in 2011 (and I was there to see it!) has finally been eclipsed - by a part-time off-spinner for Leicestershire called Colin Ackermann, with 7/18 against the Birmingham Bears.  Shame.

Still, I was in the highest of spirits as I set off for the long drive home, and the roads were relatively trouble-free, until, just as I was turning off the M3, a sign flashed up saying A303 CLOSED AT A36. I won’t repeat what I said, but my dismay proved fully justified.  Foolishly, I decided to follow the advice of my satnav, which kept bringing me back to the - closed - A303. Half an hour of weaving my way through half the villages in central Wiltshire later, I regain the 303 at Mere, and get home at 1.30.  Charlie Taylor had texted me to ask if the long journey had been worthwhile.  Even after my extended Wiltshire detour, my reply was unreserved:  absolutely!