It has been a chilly, overcast day in most of England, and that means good conditions for bowling. It was no surprise that all four teams who won the toss elected to bowl. All but one game lost some time to rain or bad light. Here are the current states of play from the four games:
Nottinghamshire have Hampshire struggling at 199/9.
Durham have done a similar number on Kent, who are 190/9.
Somerset struggled to 202 (just getting a batting bonus point), but they did it quickly in the best of the weather and had time to hit back, reducing Lancashire to 46/4.
There was little play at Hove, but Yorkshire had the worst of it, ending on 84/6.
It is a general rule in multi-day cricket that you don’t really know which side is on top until both sides have done some batting, and that’s certainly the case here. If the weather conditions are similar tomorrow then Notts, Durham and Lancs could all lose wickets quickly, but if the weather is better they could all establish good leads. Meanwhile one thing is certain – the teams that batted first are not getting a lot of batting bonus points, whereas the teams that bowled first will probably all pick up the maximum of 3 bowling points.
Also all of the games look like producing a result, and that is very important to teams who want that 14 point win bonus. Nottinghamshire would have liked nothing better than warm, sunny weather and lots of big-scoring draws, but they won’t get that, so they have to win their game in case Somerset or Durham win theirs.
At the bottom of the table it looks like one of Sussex and Yorkshire will suffer a loss with few bonus points. That would suit everyone else just fine.
None of the news services seems to have the wit to produce an up-to-date points table, so here’s what I think the situation is. I have included in brackets the maximum additional points each team can gain.
- Nottinghamshire: 181 (19)
- Somerset: 172 (16)
- Durham: 171 (19)
- Hampshire: 160 (22*)
- Lancashire: 155 (19)
- Sussex: 153 (20)
- Kent: 151 (22*)
- Yorkshire: 147 (22)
- Surrey: 124 (relegated)
* While it is theoretically possible that both Hampshire and Kent could pass 400 in their first innings, with only one wicket left each the chances are that they will not get more than 200, so they can only earn 18 points, not 22.