Essex should, on paper, be very satisfied with their draw away to reigning County champs Durham but on the long journey back home they were probably reflecting on what might have been a momentous win.
After a sticky start on Thursday morning, Essex dominated most of the match due in most part to some fine batting from Jaik Mickleburgh and James Foster who took Essex from 102 for four to an imposing 441 in their record-breaking fifth wicket stand of 339.
Essex then lost six wickets for just 43 runs, showing just how crucial that partnership was.
For Mickleburgh it could prove to be a breakthrough innings. The young Norfolk batsman has already impressed the folk at Essex having come through the academy there and this winter was part of the England Performance Squad.
England selector James Whitaker saw the 20-year-old’s mature innings against Durham and must have been impressed. Whitaker will have also seen James Foster’s 169 which included 19 fours and two sixes.
Already acknowledged as the country’s best gloveman, it can’t be long before the clamour grows again for Foster to get a long overdue chance behind the stumps for England if he continues to bat like this.
But then again, we’ve heard that argument every season for the past four or five years. Foster must feel like he has to score a century each innings and take at least 15 catches a match to be considered.
Stubborn Durham batting and the weather played their part in thwarting Essex’s second win in a row on their return to the top tier of the County Championship.
It also didn’t help that Durham were captained by Hollywood superstar Will Smith. The Men In Black star donned his whites for the match at the Riverside with temperatures as low as a bracing 9 degrees on at the start of the match.
Not exactly the Californian temperatures he’s used to but Smith, a nippy bowler who can reverse-swing in the right conditions, toughed it out in the north east.
Kiwi bowler Chris Martin, Essex’s overseas signing in the absence of the delayed Danish Kaneria, has been delayed himself. The two Vs are holding the New Zealander up… a visa and a volcano.
There’s been a delay in the processing of his work visa (apparently he was being confused with the lead singer of Coldplay who’s not allowed back in the country) and even so the ongoing problems with air travel meant he would have been unlikely to make it to Essex in time for their next Championship game against Lancashire, which begins at the County Ground this morning (Wednesday).
Caps off to Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh, aka the two cricket mad Irish men behind The Duckworth Lewis Method, who’ve been nominated for an Ivor Novello Award.
The cricket-centric pop duo released their debut, eponymous album last summer to coincide with the Ashes, creating a new musical genre in the process.
All the songs were about the beauty, eccentricity and absurdity of cricket and performed by these magnificent musicians sporting blazers, boaters and substantial facial hair. I saw them at the Latitude Festival and they were first rate.
On news of being nominated, DLM said: ““We, the Duckworth Lewis Method, are politely jubilant to be nominated in the best album category of this year’s Ivor Novello Awards. What joy! What honour!
"Our hippopotomously titled debut album really was as fun to make as it sounds. And it is to the eternal credit of this august, nay, July institution that ‘a record about cricket’ should be afforded the same opportunities as its less niche compatriots.”
There’s another chance to see them in their whites as part of the Meltdown festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on June 17.
Find out more about these fine fellows at www.dlmethod.com
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