ursus arctos wrote:

QUOTE:
Very interesting day:

Durham lead by 64 runs with 4 wickets remaining in the 1st innings

Hampshire lead by 94 runs with 9 wickets remaining

Somerset lead by 18 runs with 8 wickets remaining

Sussex trail by 375 runs with 7 wickets remaining in the 1st innings

Interesting doesn't even start to describe it.


Off to West Bridgford tomorrow and Sat, to watch this unfold.


As it stands, Notts (narrow) favourites for champs, Durham just behind, with Hampshire out of it.

Yorks favs. to beat drop - but experience dictates Kent and Sussex will survive.

With the county game seemingly doomed in the
headlights of the juggernaut that is 20Twenty,
and the most exciting finish to the one day game
in years, why don't we tell the fuckers with the
cash to broadcast to Indian TV to just fuck off?

Feel free to sign up all the players you want to broadcast vacuous instant gratification.

We, on the other hand will cut our cloth accordingly, and, if we have to will use less able players.

But we'll not prostitute ourselves on the altar of Mammon that football (and "professional" RU has done)

Fog has delayed the start of play at Trent Bridge.

How Olde Tyme England is that?

Some useful background for sixmartlets, who I visualise in his Southern Italian hamlet, vainly trying to explain to the locals at the Caffe Sport just what he is doing with those pencils and the earphones plugged into his laptop.

"Calculators out, writes Lawrence Booth at Hove. If Sussex, resuming on 25 for three against Yorkshire, are bowled out for under 200, they are in real trouble. It would mean they could only finish above Yorkshire by beating them, which – in this scenario – would be out of the question. Sussex would then be holding their breath to see what happens at Canterbury, where Kent – currently tied with Sussex on 154 points, but ahead of them by virtue of having won more games – can still collect an extra bonus point by taking three more wickets in 44 overs against Durham. Basically, if Sussex don't get 200, their fate is in the hands of others; if they do, then Kent need to worry. Of which more later. So far, they have added 11 runs without further loss. But it's going to be a tense morning."

This is far more exciting than I'd hoped. I don't share Guy's belief that Yorkshire will be the ones to dopr: Kent must be favourites now, especially as Durham's lead races towards 100. Sussex have a battle on - if they get over 250, though, and they're a tough bunch, that should be enough to relegate Kent.

Interesting paragraph on Kent from the Cricinfo match report:

QUOTE:
For so many years this has been a club able to command loyal, even partisan support, but the crowds have been thin for this match. There are too many players from overseas for young supporters to empathise with as once they could when their cricketers came from Bromley to Broadstairs and not Bloemfontein. The ambitious redevelopment of the ground has been postponed - conceivably for ever.

Somerset lose an early wicket.

It increasingly looks like this is between Notts and Durham (whose lead is now 104, with 4 wickets remaining).

Notts being held up by Hants. They've resorted to putting Will Jefferson in at silly point to intimidate.

Jefferson, if you didn't know is 6 ft 10.

The fog seems to have gotten to the Grauniad's man at Trent Bridge:

"As if regional papers sacking cricket writers the length and breadth of the country, so that they can concentrate exclusively on football and office rewrites of everything else, isn't dangerous enough for county cricket, the BBC also has similar tendencies. Five Live is awash with default anti-cricket sentiments and most of those who still value it want to turn it into football. Kevin Howells' championship scores – much to his chagrin – now have to be read in a way where it can be impossible to work out who is winning. "Just give us more intonation, Kevin. Don't worry too much about the information.'' And cricket followers suffer all this with barely a single complaint. Risk a gentle joke about Chelsea or Manchester United – any Premiership club in fact – and you can be submerged by scores of emails saying "We know where you live.'' Talk nonsense about the county championship and it is just shrugged off as one of those things. Time for a revolution, I say."

Say what?

Sussex have just reached the magic 200, and Kent have already lost a wicket.

I'm afraid things look rather dark for KOTR at the moment.

Cmon Durham. Stick it up the arses of all those who spoke out against us being elected to the first class game. Shame Ive promised to work tomorrow or Id pop down to Canterbury.

Days in sport dont get much better than today....Durham must be title favourites now, turmoil at Newcastle and a new mega rich investor at Sunderland.

ursus arctos wrote:

QUOTE:
Some useful background for sixmartlets, who I visualise in his Southern Italian hamlet, vainly trying to explain to the locals at the Caffe Sport just what he is doing with those pencils and the earphones plugged into his laptop.

"Calculators out, writes Lawrence Booth at Hove. If Sussex, resuming on 25 for three against Yorkshire, are bowled out for under 200, they are in real trouble. It would mean they could only finish above Yorkshire by beating them, which – in this scenario – would be out of the question. Sussex would then be holding their breath to see what happens at Canterbury, where Kent – currently tied with Sussex on 154 points, but ahead of them by virtue of having won more games – can still collect an extra bonus point by taking three more wickets in 44 overs against Durham. Basically, if Sussex don't get 200, their fate is in the hands of others; if they do, then Kent need to worry. Of which more later. So far, they have added 11 runs without further loss. But it's going to be a tense morning."

Thank you Ursus. It's been a tense few days, but Kent's almost staggering incompetence in the final two games of the season appears to have saved us, whatever happens at Hove this afternoon.

Though I very much hope we can bat out for a draw and thereby do it on out efforts.

Grizzly Adams has come in and scored 26 n.o (24 in boundaries including 2 sixes as I speak). And another 6 from the skipper.

Unfortunately no laptop, but the wonders of internet ball by ball radio commentary from BBC Radio Sussex keeps me in touch during the season.

Though I would like to have been in my once customary place on the benches with a pint of Harveys in hand, as it is less tense to see it than listen. I admit that I turned it off for most of yesterday and followed via cricinfo as it was too painful to listen.

I shall be in Milino's Bar Sport at 6 pm this evening for Samp Juve and will excitedly tell them we have stayed up. I know they will worry otherwise.

It looks like Durham's. Many congrats to them.

Congratulations indeed to Durham. Now only Gloucs, Northants and Somerset haven't won the title.

Congratulations to the Wearsiders.

Performance of the day a chanceless 81* by Sergeant Frank Wilson as Warmington Home Guard just scraped in by the last wicket against a CoE/ ARP combined XI. Their secret weapon Fred Trueman knackered his shoulder bowling a beamer at Captain Mainwaring, who went on to make 19.

So.

Durham shellack Kent by over an innings, Yorkshire come back from the dead to post 400/9, and force Sussex to follow on.

Somerset implode, and blow their championship chance, and Notts do the same following a determined, gritty, and thoroughly professional performance by Hampshire.

Will Buckley's verdict in the Obs?

"The season ended with a wimper".

Well, if it ever ends in a bang, I want to watch if from Australia.

Bit of a central London celebration last night with the returning football fans from Villa. Stinking hangover.
Just caught the tail end of the "Home Guard " game, was Paul Edgington playing? The guy from "The Good Life" ?

Tresco and Pals get Stuffed at Baseball.

It's a pub-table conversation brought to life. An animated hypothetical. Would Trescothick's hand-eye co-ordination make him a natural slugger? Could Giles' ability to spin a cricket ball translate into a mean curve? Might Jones make a sharp shortstop? And would the superior athleticism and ball skills of the professionals outweigh the knowledge and understanding of the amateurs?

The answer was an emphatic 'no'. This became sharply apparent when Giles took to the mound in the third inning and gave up 10 runs in 13 at-bats, a hammering easily equivalent to a bowler going for 36 in a single over. He was even on the receiving end of a grand-slam, Ian Young smashing a homer into the Old Pavilion with the bases loaded. It earned him some merciless ribbing from Jonny Gould, the Channel Five sports factotum doing sterling work on the tannoy.

Ashley Giles being a finger spinner who has retired through injury, it didn't surprise me that he wasn't that good.

Nor that Geraint Jones wasn't that good.