There is nothing more frustrating as a cricket fan than when the English weather interferes especially when it is your team and doubly so when it is a home quarter-final. As I write this we are all waiting for the conditions to improve sufficiently to allow the Last of this year’s blast’s last 8 ties to go ahead.
I feel I’ve done my time sitting in the rain at The County Ground over the years (and at various other grounds around the country) and have run the full range of activities to while away the time. A newspaper or two, this month’s The Cricketer and, if it’s really bad Wisden have been my mainstays.
Today is different, I’m at home so have a greater variety of ways to spend my time. Twitter is of course a staple of all of us and the Somerset social media team have done a great job in extremely trying circumstances today to do everything they can to keep us all informed.
I am a big fan of The Cricket Paper for its breadth and depth of coverage of the sport throughout the year but this week’s edition has had my blood boiling since it arrived yesterday. The front page unsurprisingly is split between James Vince’s latest test recall and Mornie Morkel’s winning contribution for Surrey on Wednesday. Fair enough but Jack Leach is a footnote after thought below Whab Riaz, Ed Barnard and Jordan Thompson.
Turn to the reports of last weeks games and you learn that not only have Surrey got a 32 point lead but apparently 5 games in hand. Really. It is so frustrating that the credibility of the writing is damaged by these biases and factual inaccuracies. They really must do better.
Of course I have set myself the task of keeping a daily blog going on the season’s run in so am dovetailing this with watching Tres and Co Sky. They may not be the greats of TMS but there is certainly a chemistry developing which is very entertaining in such circumstances.
But inevitably the delay today starts turning our thoughts to Headingley and Somerset’s next championship game against Yorkshire. I’ll write my preview of that game for The InCider later today but today’s thinking has been much more about planning a trip to Leeds for the final day on Saturday.
Yorkshire away has been a productive fixture in the last couple of years. A tremendous win at Headingley in 2016 over a team also in the title hunt really ignited the run in which eventually saw us come up one run short. Last year I was luck enough to spend 2 day’s at Scarborough as Somerset completed a crucial victory in their successful relegation scrap.
One of the things I love about a trip to any Yorkshire grounds is that the (4 day) crowds are so knowledgeable and gracious to their opponents while remaining passionate about their team.
So while I hope that Somerset get another win under their belt this week can I be really selfish and ask them to wrap it up on the last day, preferably with Tres unbeaten at the end?
