With the start of the championship season but a day away, the round of 3 day UCCE matches came to an end, and as per usual many were affected by inclement weather.
At Fenner’s Essex and Cambridge UCCE ground out a draw. The only real performances of notes heading towards the county season were in the Essex batting line up – Pettini and ten Doeschate hitting big tons in the first innings and new signing Jason Gallian getting 79 in the second – although another new boy, David Masters did claim 2-18 off 14 overs.
At Derby there was a real turgid affair between the host county and Durham UCCE. Here the most notable displays were from new boy Rikki Clarke (79) and old timer Kevin Dean (11-3-16-4). Perhaps the left armer is going to have a golden autumn to his career.
On the south coast there was very little more play, the 108 made by James Adams on the first day the only real highlight.
Kent failed to build on their dominating first innings. After the top four all made scores above 50, and two of them over 100, they couldn’t bowl Bradford/Leeds out, being made to toil for 94 overs and using 9 bowlers in the process – even Rob Key bowled an over!
And finally, the last and most weather affected game was at the Oval, surrey managing only 8 overs in their reply to Loughborough, Jon Batty and Usman Afzaal making it to stumps undefeated.
So the season is but 60 hours upon us. Fans up and down the country will be licking their lips at the prospect of seeing the new signings and old timers in action for their county. Personally, I am looking forward to seeing Simon Jones in action, as well as the long awaited return from injury of Matt Mason. As always I look forward to seeing Graeme Hick plunder some more runs – but most exciting of all I think is the prospect of days, weeks and months of cricket, cricket and more cricket!
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