County watch
Another Sunday, another Friends Provident Trophy match and the great thing about 50-over cricket as opposed to Twenty20 is it has enough lull periods for some light blogging. So, after last week's game at the Oval when Chris Lewis and Andrew Strauss were the main actors, today I'm back in God's Own County, at Chelmsford for Essex v Sussex. I'll post thoughts as they occur to me.
The interesting characters on display today are Alastair Cook, Ravi Bopara and, I suppose, Andre Nel for Essex, while it will be interesting to see whether Matt Prior and Luke Wright can push their England claims for Sussex. Bopara has been on astounding form this season - a fact overlooked by those of you who have rated him only fifth of the contenders to be the England No 6 in our poll. I know I'm something of a cheerleader for Rav the Chav, but his four innings for Essex this season have been 150, 99, 137 and 54 not out, a fairly convincing run of scores.
Anyway, Cook and Bopara were batting together after Wright picked up the first wicket of the day, Mark Pettini caught by Prior (yes, it does happen) for 26. The partnership didn't last, however, as Cook was leg-before for 12 leaving a ball from Robin Martin-Jenkins. Bopara then added 115 with Grant Flower before being caught on the boundary for 59, a relative failure by his latest standards. Wright's bowling looked nippy but expensive, going for 57 off eight overs.
Essex reached a respectable 291-8 thanks to 75 by Flower and 61 by Ryan ten Doeschate, but the latter was badly missed by Prior off the bowling of Wright. I say missed but Prior reacted so late to the thin edge that he only moved when the ball thumped into the boundary boards. Perhaps he was leaving it for the non-existent slip? He redeemed himself with two stumpings.
Rain hindered the Sussex reply. They reached 31-0 off eight overs with Prior on 21, having had a few angry exchanges with Nel. After a long break, they came back out needing 156 off 24 overs and although Prior made 50 before being caught, ironically, by Nel the rest of the team struggled with some good Essex fielding. Three men were run out, the most embarrassing of them Wright for 8 in a mix-up with Prior.
I'll take it that Mr Prior is not very high on your Christmas card list?
Posted by: Terry | 28 Apr 2008 09:49:51