Northamptonshire 342 (Bavuma 134, Critchley 4-107)
Derbyshire 34-1
A busy domestic day, coupled with the viewing demands of one of the finest games of cricket one could wish to see delayed the blog until today.
Apologies for that, but at the end of the first day honours I just about even at Chesterfield. A fine century buy Temba Bavuma gave Northamptonshire a competitive but not overwhelming first innings score.
He is a fine, technically correct player whose experience in this country will serve him well in years to come. He had support down the order, but no one else passed 40 and Derbyshire did well to bowl them out for 342.
There were four wickets for Matt Critchley, although he went at six an over on this small ground, with two each for Hamidullah Qadri and Luis Reece. There seemed to be a fair amount of turn, so we will be hoping to get at least parity on first innings, and ideally the lead. Batting last will not be easy, but a long batting order can earn its corn today.
Although we lost Luis Reece early, Billy Godleman and Wayne Madsen will resume this morning and hope to make inroads into the visiting total.
More from me later.
It was a genuine pleasure to watch a player as good as Temba Bavuma compile such a thoughtful century yesterday. He calmly steadied the ship, then took full advantage of any wayward bowling in the afternoon session. This was proper batting from the first black African to score a century for South Africa.
ReplyDeleteI thought Qadri was unlucky in his first spell - he could easily have had two wickets. There was a brilliant catch by du Plooy (what a very good cricketer he looks) a to remove the stubborn Keogh, and I had to admire the captain's persistance with Critchley despite him being launched out of the park several times by Northants aggressive lower middle order. If Northansts play like that every week they must be an exciting team to watch.
The one blot on an excellent day was the slow over-rate. Something really needs to be done about this, and it has to be with the umpires to chivvy things along. They disappeared for lunch bang on 1, when another over would have seen Derbyshire reach 30 for the morning session, which is still way too slow in my opinion. They dawdled out after lunch too, only starting at 13.42, wasting two more minutes. And then Critchley only decided to set his field for Hutton once the batsman had taken guard, another example of time being lost, short spells that all add up. Shame on Derbyshire for taking so long to bowl their overs, a high percentage of which were spin.
Disastrous second day by Derbyshire, now looking at a defeat already. Sadly days like this are never far away where Derbyshire are concerned. If we take it into the fourth day we'll have done well.
ReplyDeleteWith the remarkable scoring rate we can have it won by 1445.
ReplyDeleteOptimistic Dave
pitch is actually a real shocker - that came direct from Dino today when he sat next to me temporarily today in a break in play during Northants short second innings - his view was we were behind the 8 ball after a poor bowling performance yesterday afternoon when northants scored 200 in a session - big cracks on the pitch and ball spinning considerably with uneven bounce by tea on day 1 he said . enjoyed today nonetheless but it will be over by lunch tomorrow and with heave thundery rain forecast for saturday it will be a premature end to the festival of cricket which is a shame - poor pitch though which may well get reported!
ReplyDelete