Back to haunt us

By Dasher Denning
May 23 2016

Dasher Denning reports on attritional day, which involved and led to Perserverance. 

At about 10.15am the Somerset CCC Twitter account posted a picture of the Lord’s wicket and asked its followers if they’d like a bat on it. With all my extensive experience of watching odd days of cricket at Lord’s I instantly tweeted back and advised that we should bowl as it looked a bit green and Lord’s pitches tend to get better as the game goes on. Thankfully as it turned out, new Somerset captain Chris Rogers – who has a lot more experience of Lord’s pitches than the odd alcohol fuelled day that I have - didn't listen to my twitter views and decided to bat upon winning the toss. When I met him outside Tesco Express on the walk down from St. John’s Wood tube, local pitch guru Barmy Kev agreed with Buck and even went so far as to say that it was a massive toss to win.

Sitting in the sun drenched Upper Edrich watching the first few overs the local knowledge seemed to be right. The ball wasn’t doing much and the batsmen seemed to have plenty of time to get in line. All good. Then Tres got trapped lbw. 9-1. Uh oh. What I do have plenty of experience in is watching Somerset batting collapses on decent looking wickets, so I was apprehensive at this point. 

Banger’s departure brought Chris Rogers to the crease. He received a big round of applause from the locals, who were clearly appreciative of everything he had done for Middlesex during his time there. Thankfully, before it became too much of a love in, a man after my own heart sat just behind shouted: "You've had your clap, now bugger off".

What followed was an attritional first hour (this word will appear again), during which Somerset rocketed along at two an over. Toby Roland-Jones was  particularly impressive/tight, at one point having figures of 6-?-6-1 (I put the question mark in because I wasn’t sure of the number of maidens).

I shall make no mention of Ollie Rayner bar to say that he bowled two maidens first up to keep the pressure on the Somerset batsmen during this period. Apparently in my last match report I earned the wrath of his dad for using the words “action” and “suspect” in the same sentence. Anyway, the Middlesex captain brought him on after only 14 overs, the earliest he's ever been on according to the locals. Perhaps they’d had word that I was in attendance.

Anyway, Somerset accelerated a little bit in the second hour of the morning session, though it wasn’t exactly T20 stuff. The 50 came up in the 22^nd over, with James Harris quite expensive (three overs for 17 at one point) compared with the other Middlesex bowlers. The view of the locals was that he's not really got going this season.

The only other things of note during the morning session were an antipodean fielder telling people in the Upper Edrich where to sit so that they weren’t in Chris Rogers’ eyeline and an appeal for caught behind against Rogers when the score was on 68. However, it wasn’t the biggest of appeals by Rayner – “he normally gets down on his knees and begs if he thinks it's out" said Kev. 

88-1 at lunch off 32 overs.

Lunch involved a pint of Stowford Press and a half perambulation around the outside of the ground due to the building works. Lunchtime discussions included whether Franklin had been continually bowling no balls in the first session and, more interestingly, whether Somerset legend Tractor had acquired a Trego-esque sleeve over the course of the winter. 

With regard to the building works, the new Warner Stand looks like it could be impressive, though I’m not sure where all the MCC members are going to sit for the Sri Lanka test as it’s still a bit of a building site.

Shortly after lunch, the impressive Toby Roland-Jones accounted for the up until that point equally impressive Tom Abell, though ironically it was probably R-J’s loosest ball of the game, Abell chasing it when he didn't need to.

Thereafter, the word attritional took over. There was noticeably more humidity and swing in the afternoon session and with Middlesex’s bowlers continuing to be very tight Somerset’s progress was slow as they had to take a watchful approach. The 128 ball fifty partnership between Rogers and Hildreth was the sort of stuff that would have had Boycott salivating. Dig in lads. "It's a good job they've allowed a month for this game" said legendary Guardian letter writer Keith Flett, who’d noticed that the scorecard had the game starting on Sunday 22^nd April and finishing on Wednesday 25^th May. 

Highlights of the session? Rogers brought up his 50, which led Hazel Hackneyshire to comment that Rogers was Abell to do what Tom hadn't been Abell to do. Franklin caused Rogers some issues late on, with one very loud lbw shout seeing the umpire looking as if he was starting to put his finger up, only to proceed to put his hand in his coat pocket. Phew. Apart from that, it probably tells a story that we spent the latter part of the session recounting lyrics from Chesney Hawkes, Sonia, Fat Larry's Band and Ottowan songs. Between that, Kev spent the afternoon taking pictures of people who were asleep. 

Things carried on in the same vain after tea, with Kev informing us he'd once paid "a lot of money" to see an Elvis hologram play a gig at Wembley Arena. Fellow Somerset fan Ian R then let his county down badly by declaring that at a Take That reunion gig a few years ago there was a Robbie Williams hologram for a couple of songs.

Thankfully (for me at least), things carried on in the same vain on the pitch as well with Hildreth and Rogers bringing up their 100 partnership off 207 balls. With the dark clouds gathering the last half hour or so became very much a case of could Chris Rogers get to his century before the rain arrived. This and the locals getting increasingly bored and restless – “if it rains can we go home?" was heard a number of times. 

Chris Rogers did get to his century just before the gloom enveloped the ground. He got generous applause from both sets of supporters, quickly followed by "surely we can go home now" from the bloke behind me. Shortly afterwards there were cheers from the Upper Edrich as the umpires took the players off for bad light. It looked to me as if they told the Middlesex captain that they’d have to go off if the new ball was taken. The only other notable moment of the day was Kev trying to make conversation with someone with half a bottle of white wine who turned out to be a bit odd.

With the prospects of any further play looking slim, we took the opportunity to stroll down Lisson Grove to check out a new pub - The Globe - we'd heard about. Unfortunately, when we got there it was closed due to "cellar problems". We therefore ended up in a pub about twenty yards away to wrap up the day and hold our own version of The Verdict. It was called The Perseverance, which sort of summed the day's cricket up perfectly.