The third round of county championship matches finished yesterday, with Nottinghamshire and Sussex the early leaders in division one, and Leicestershire and Kent leading the way in division two.
Here are nine things Wisden editor and Mail Sport’s Cricket Correspondent LAWRENCE BOOTH learned.
1 – Surrey left in a spin
It was hard enough winning three championship titles in a row – the threepeat – but four is so difficult there isn’t even a pithy nickname for it.
Surrey’s high-scoring draw at Hove leaves them without a win from their first three games, and languishing in seventh place in division one.
If they are to emulate the last team to win four in succession – Yorkshire, either side of the Second World War – they are going to have to rediscover their knack for taking 20 cheap wickets, and that has been tricky when their main spinner is Dan Lawrence, whose six wickets have cost 60.
So far this season, they’ve conceded 582 for six against Essex, 219 and 300 for five against Hampshire, and 435 against Sussex.
Surrey have started their quest for a fourth successive Championship title with three draws
They have struggled to bowl teams out, with spinner Dan Lawrence averaging 60 with the ball
Sussex opener Tom Haines piled on the runs during a high-scoring draw at Hove in this round
2 – Lancashire’s struggles laid bare
Lancashire, it turns out, are not the shoo-ins for promotion some of us imagined. After hanging on grimly against Northamptonshire at Old Trafford, they were grateful for rain against Leicestershire at Grace Road.
Their batting has been reasonable, with Marcus Harris, Keaton Jennings and Josh Bohannon all in the runs.
But with the exception of a sharp spell by Tom Aspinwall to the Middlesex tail, their bowlers have struggled: second in their averages is Tom Bailey, with six wickets at 36.
Lancashire’s bowlers have struggled so far this year as they try to bounce back to division one
3 – Ahmed takes his chance
Is Rehan Ahmed making the leap to a genuine all-rounder? Early-season conditions, plus the success of Leicestershire’s seamers, have limited him to 32 overs of leg-spin, yielding a single wicket.
So full credit to the management for thinking laterally and offering him the chance to open the batting.
He has responded with a second-innings 77 off 59 balls against Derbyshire, and now a three-hour hundred against Lancashire.
A spinner who can turn it both ways and bat? Sounds like the kind of cricketer England have been dreaming about.
Leicestershire all-rounder Rehan Ahmed is thriving in his new role as an opening batsman
4 – Crawley continues to be a concern
Zak Crawley elicited a little sympathy after he was freakishly caught behind against Gloucestershire after the ball ricocheted from slip to keeper.
His second-innings half-century to save Kent from an embarrassing defeat at Canterbury has temporarily quietened concerns over his Test spot, but his record this season remains underwhelming: 145 runs in division two at 29.
That follows a miserable winter in which he became a plaything for New Zealand’s Matt Henry and was dropped by Sunrisers Eastern Cape during the SA20.
Zak Crawley has endured a difficult start for Kent, and his form is a concern for England
5 – Will England be swayed?
In the olden days, the selectors would simply have picked an in-form opener from elsewhere to go in first with Ben Duckett against Zimbabwe next month, and there is no shortage of those.
Crawley’s team-mate Ben Compton held Kent’s first innings together at Canterbury with 178, while the forgotten Dom Sibley followed his twin hundreds against Hampshire with 82 against Sussex, for whom the fast-emerging Tom Haines hit 174 (to go with 141 against Somerset).
Then there’s the equally forgotten Haseeb Hameed, who carried his bat for 138 as Nottinghamshire took control against Warwickshire, before rain scuppered them.
And what of Alex Lees, fresh from 172 against Yorkshire? But will England be swayed?
With the pressure on Crawley rising, Dom Sibley is one of many in-form openers on the circuit
6 – Northamptonshire’s unsung hero
Is there a busier county cricketer than Luke Procter? Not only is he captaining a Northamptonshire side in search of a new lease of life under Darren Lehmann, but he is opening both the batting and the bowling – and doing it rather well.
At Derby these past few days, he began with figures of three for 61, then scored 150 to set up a lead of 193.
A bruised heel limited his contribution in the second innings, when rain helped Derbyshire out of a spot of bother.
Northamptonshire skipper Luke Proctor (left, raising bat) continues to shine with bat and ball
7 – Bashir is running out of time
The Shoaib Bashir experiment isn’t working. Loaned out by Somerset to Glamorgan for the start of the summer, he finished yesterday’s game against Middlesex at Lord’s with a season’s haul to two wickets at 152 each, with a run-rate of 4.23.
April in England (and Wales) is no place for a spinner, but even so these are not figures to strike fear into the hearts of India or Australia, who both face five-Test series against England this year.
Shoaib Bashir’s three-game loan spell at Glamorgan has yielded two wickets at 152 runs apiece
8 – Essex’s unlucky uncapped star
The fact that Sam Cook is being lined up for a Test debut against Zimbabwe is a reminder that Jamie Porter, his Essex new-ball opening partner, remains among the best uncapped seamers in the country.
And with Cook rested for the visit of Worcestershire, Porter took it upon himself to bowl Essex to their first win of the season, taking six for 52 in the second innings and claiming the crucial wicket – Ethan Brookes for 88 – to end a last-wicket stand of 64 with Jacob Duffy (who finished nought not out).
England has probably passed Porter by, but career figures of 528 wickets at 23 suggest he has been unlucky.
Jamie Porter’s form shows us why he is among the best uncapped seamers in the country
9 – Green reminds us of his class
If he can stay fit, Australian all-rounder Cameron Green will be a large obstacle to England’s Ashes hopes this winter.
Signed by Gloucestershire thanks to the largesse of a mystery donor, Green began with 112 against Kent at Canterbury, pausing only to retire hurt, briefly, after scampering the single that brought up his century.
The only pity was that Gloucestershire opted for conservatism, setting their opponents 413 in just over a session – and finishing with six wickets, when they might easily have had the time for all 10. English cricket doesn’t help itself sometimes.
Cameron Green’s century for Gloucestershire was a warning sign for England’s Ashes hopes
West Indies cruelly denied
Thanks to the 2019 World Cup final, you’ll have heard of boundary countback. But how about hitting a six too soon? Because that is the crime that has cost West Indies a place at the women’s World Cup for the first time in 25 years.
Needing 167, quickly, to beat Thailand and overhaul Bangladesh on net run-rate, they reached 162 for four in 10.4 overs, at which stage their only hope was to hit the next two balls for four and six in that order.
Instead, Stafanie Taylor hit Phannita Maya for six, ending the game, and leaving West Indies 0.01 of a run behind the Bangladeshis.
Madly, 168 for four off 10.5 overs wasn’t quite good enough, but 172 for four off 10.6 would have done the job: in other words, four, then six, would have seen West Indies qualify. It can be a crazy sport at times.
West Indies Women were cruelly denied a place at the World Cup for the first time in 25 years
Gibraltar’s Super-Nan
One of the best parts of editing Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, published this week, is compiling the index of unusual occurrences.
This year’s includes ‘Grandma makes international debut’, and tells the story of Gibraltar wicketkeeper Sally Barton, a former Christian missionary in the Congo and maths lecturer at LSE who won her first cap at the age of 66 years 334 days.
She didn’t hold a catch or get a bat in any of her six T20 internationals, but did run out one of Czechia’s openers, which is more than you or I can say.
Indian wonderkid makes his mark
This column has closely followed the career of 14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi, who on Saturday played his first IPL game, for Rajasthan Royals, and hit his first ball over extra cover for six.
He hit his fourth for six, too, before falling for 34 off 20 – the start, we hope, of an extraordinary career.
