Durham v Derbyshire day 1

Durham 307-4 (Bedingham 170*, Conners 3-54)

v Derbyshire

I have to admit to not seeing as much of today's play as I would have liked. I saw most of the morning, none of the afternoon and a little of the evening session, pesky old work being the problem.

Sam Conners reinforced my impression of him as a 'coming' bowler. His early spell saw him on a hat trick, but that was as good as it got for Derbyshire, although Durham never really got away, scoring at a steady three an over across the day in the face of steady, if not penetrative bowling.

It looked a good toss to win and South African David Bedingham made the most of a good track with a fine innings. He looks an excellent player and certainly seems to capitalise on being 'in' when the time comes.

A few balls went past the bat but it was hard graft today and the bowlers stood up to the examination pretty well. No doubt tomorrow will bring more leather-chasing, but it is then up to a batting line-up sans Godleman to do unto others as was done to us. It is a good opportunity for Tom Wood to show what he can do, so too Brooke Guest, playing as an extra batsman. Fair play to him and I hope he does well, but Alex Hughes will feel aggrieved to miss out after his double hundred last week.

Finally, for those who don't follow me on Twitter, I am delighted to say that two leading blog ranking sites have ranked this blog number one and six respectively of the 'cricket blogs, websites and influencers' in the country, based on various parameters and taking information from a range of rankings. 

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I am very humbled by those rankings in the face of the competition out there (others in the top ten are more than one-person operations) so thank you all!