Ball one: Pennington cashes in
Nottinghamshire bounced back from last week’s defeat to go into the T20 Blast break with a handy 10-point lead at the top of the County Championship. Yorkshire, enduring a tricky return to the top flight, were their victims, the leaders simply too strong at Headingley.
Ben Slater (52 and 78) and Joe Clarke (64 and 94) gave the bowlers something to work with, but it was the craft of Mohammad Abbas, with a first innings 6 for 45, and the hostility of Dillon Pennington, with a second-innings 5 for 106, supported by Liam Patterson-White’s 3 for 40 in 30 parsimonious overs, that delivered the win.
The Pakistani artist is only available for six matches, but Abbas is as close to a sure thing as you’ll find in first-class cricket – ask fans of Hampshire, shorn of his services this season and languishing in seventh. Pennington has been in the England conversation for years, but is still only 26 and might finally be finding the core strength and consistency required to realise his potential. He’ll need to be managed carefully if he is to lead the attack in Abbas’s absence, but Haseeb Hameed knows all about how injury can destroy form, so I’m sure he will do the right thing.
Notts finished one place above relegated Lancashire and Kent last season – those two counties are now propping up Division Two. It’s a funny old game.
Ball two: Porter can’t carry Essex to win
It was a frustrating on-off day four at The Oval, although Essex would probably have felt more aggrieved as the clouds rolled in over Kennington.
Surrey’s late order had, yet again, propelled them into a first-innings lead of 62 with two and a half days to play and a familiar story looked likely to play out over the Bank Holiday weekend. But the Surrey pacers were blunted by a Bazballing Paul Walter, who made 118 at the top of the order, and 20-year-old Charlie Allison who improved his first-class best from 28 to 140, the kid taking the fight to some very experienced bowlers.
Rory Burns and Dom Sibley would not have been daunted by a target of 418 at four or so an over – they’ve done it before – but whenever a partnership looked set to launch, the canny pair of Simon Harmer and Jamie Porter took a wicket or the groundstaff intervened.
The draw keeps Surrey well in touch in second, but Essex could really have done with the win, their only success of the first half of the season coming against whipping boys Worcestershire.
Ball three: JS? MS more like
At least one Lancastrian is enjoying his cricket. Bury-born John Simpson was one my county cricketers of the year in 2024 and simply carried his form into Division One as if moving from a club’s Saturday XI to its Sunday XI. A third century of the season, contributing to a match-defining 173-run stand for the sixth wicket with Finn Hudson-Prentice, set up Jack Carson’s second-innings five-fer and a comfortable win for Sussex at Hampshire.
It was 16 years before the wicketkeeper-batter took on captaincy responsibilities but, halfway through his third decade in the county game, Simpson is thriving. His team are third in the table and he is third on the run-scoring ladder, with 675 at 84.
Ball four: Somerset set for better things?
No team puts their fans through the mill like Somerset. They opened the season with two draws and two defeats then produced a hat-trick of wins. Nobody at Taunton needs to be reminded about what it is that kills.
Lewis Gregory’s men made the long trip to Chester-le-Street and it looked likely to be a wasted journey with the last pair at the crease still 149 runs behind on first innings. Cue a handy last-wicket stand and bring on Matt Henry, Josh Davey, Migael Pretorius and Craig Overton. That quartet has more than 400 first-class matches between them, in which they’ve taken more 1,400 wickets, and they soon got to work.
If one batter makes a century, a target of 265 looks a lot easier and Tom Lammonby was that man, putting on an undefeated 139 with Tom Abell to cruise over the line. Lammonby, not yet 25, was one of my county cricketers of the year 2020, that strange Covid summer. With an average of 32 and just eight tons in 68 first-class matches, it’s fair to say he hasn’t kicked on as expected. At least not yet.
Ball five: Handscomb’s nap hand
Who expected Leicestershire to be team of the season at the halfway mark? Five wins and two draws from seven matches doesn’t quite allow Peter Handscomb’s team to freewheel through the midsummer and autumn matches, but they’re sitting pretty and can be forgiven for a little preliminary reprogramming of the satnavs for 2026.
Lancashire were the latest opponents to be swept aside inside three days by another irresistible team effort. There was only one wicket in the match for the hitherto unstoppable seamer Ian Holland, but that just opened the door for Logan van Beek to lead the attack with seven and Josh Hull to underline his return to full fitness with five wickets.
The match turned on the third-wicket record partnership of 256 between Rehan Ahmed and Lewis Hill, both of whom plundered tons at better than four runs per over. It was the leg-spinner’s second century of the season, both taken off Lancashire, as he morphs, ever more convincingly, into an all-rounder. Ahmed seems to enjoy batting against this attack – mind you, who doesn’t?
Ball six: daffodils blooming in May
Another big middle-order partnership from two centurions proved the key as Glamorgan picked up a third win on the bounce to go third and into the Blast in great heart.
Having lost Marnus Labuschagne with the scoreboard showing 52 for 3 and with the old pros Toby Roland-Jones and Ryan Higgins in the groove for Middlesex, the reliable Sam Northeast was joined by the mercurial Kiran Carlson and 228 runs were added in contrasting styles. Chris Cooke had time to make his sixth score of the season between 36 and 69, before Glamorgan were dismissed for 383, about 100 more than Roland-Jones intended when he invited them to bat at Sophia Gardens.
Only Sam Robson offered much resistance to the home side’s bowling as 20 Middlesex wickets fell in fewer overs than Glamorgan’s 10, Australian Test bowler Matt Kuhnemann delivering on the slow left-armer’s job description with six second-innings victims. Kuhnemann has returned strongly after having had his action cleared by assessors and was recently rewarded with a Cricket Australia central contract. He’s behind Nathan Lyon in the pecking order for now, but he’s nine years younger than the grizzled GOAT and may well be first choice come the 2027 Ashes.
This article is from The 99.94 Cricket Blog
