CHAMPIONSHIP CHINWAG: Duckett defies Patel and Somerset show their teeth as Durham find success at last

NICK FRIEND looks back on an eventful round of County Championship action with reflections on some of the key talking points from around the grounds

A title defence – but in name only…
It’s safe to say, Surrey have enjoyed better periods. National champions, but decimated by injuries and unavailability. Jade Dernbach, Ollie Pope, Sam Curran, Amar Virdi, Conor McKerr and Jordan Clark all sit on the treatment table, while Jason Roy and Tom Curran are away on World Cup duty.

It represents quite some misfortune. What is left of Surrey’s charges is doing all it can, and – man for man, Michael di Venuto’s men are still fielding quite a side. Rory Burns, Mark Stoneman, Scott Borthwick, Dean Elgar, Ben Foakes, Rikki Clarke, Morne Morkel and Gareth Batty have all – at some stage – played Test cricket. But just as form and confidence come, form and confidence go.

A good toss to win, one might suggest, at Guildford as Somerset skipper Tom Abell saw his team make 344 and then watch the scores – and the pitch – get progressively lower.

First Tom Banton and now George Bartlett, Somerset’s youngsters continue to do the business for this season’s outstanding side in both red-ball and white-ball cricket. Bartlett’s 137 was pivotal. No other player on either side managed half of his first-innings score.

It’s early days, but was this a sign of things to come? A passing of the baton from champions to those next in line?

^{Surrey are yet to win this season.}

Like a fine wine
Jeetan Patel is fast becoming a Chinwag regular. As his age ticks on by the day, so too does his importance to this Warwickshire side. Ten more wickets in the match for the New Zealander. Six for 16 was his contribution the first time around, as Nottinghamshire’s feted batting lineup folded inside 45 overs.

Following on, however, it was a different story. Patel’s four wickets came through 47 overs of hard toil – the sort of effort that, as a batting side on a fourth-day pitch, one might almost accept as a relative given.

Ben Duckett, who had so struggled back in 2016 when handed that poisoned chalice of dealing with Ravi Ashwin in India as part of England’s middle order, could do no more to suggest that this flaw in what was then a fledgling career has been corrected. He defied the 39-year-old for 237 balls and 140 runs.

After his spell on England’s naughty step, a match-saving knock against county cricket’s most threatening spinner is the sort of thing that gets you noticed.

Jeetan Patel is still a key member of Warwickshire's side.

A win at last
For James Franklin, Cam Bancroft and Marcus North, the sight of a red ball in recent times must have been enough to give them nightmares. The trio of fresh arrivals have given impetus to Durham’s one-day cricket – only rain denied them progress into the playoffs of the Royal London Cup.

County Championship cricket has been something of a different story; if it can go wrong, it has gone wrong. Quite simply, nothing was working.

Batsmen had been dropped, batsmen had been recalled. It was an endless cycle in, perhaps, the most important year in Division Two’s recent history, with three teams being promoted to an increased top tier.

But then it came – a win. A win at last. And a win in a game that had everything. Four scores over 200. Four scores under 300. A good, old-fashioned game of tight four-day cricket. At different times, Durham were in the ascendancy. And then Derbyshire held all the keys.

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But there were individual performances that grabbed the game by the horns, led by Alex Lees. The former Yorkshire man carried his bat for a superb hundred in Durham’s second innings, protecting his middle and lower order after his colleagues at the top crumbled in a Ravi Rampaul-shaped heap.

And finally it was left to Ben Raine, who has flattered to deceive in red-ball cricket since returning north from Leicestershire at the start of this season. Eight wickets in the match, four in each innings. He knocked over Tony Palladino to bring proceedings to an end – the finale of a collapse that had seen the visitors lose their final four wickets in the space of eight deliveries.

A win at last. And what a win.

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