Sunday's Domestic Cricket

County Championship Games Day 1

Essex 266/9 (83.4 ov) v Leics

Charlie Shreck took season's best figures to leave Essex struggling in humid conditions on the first day of the Specsavers County Championship game at Chelmsford. The 38-year-old pace bowler had four Essex wickets for 79 when play was curtailed early because of bad light.

Shreck took the key wicket of Tom Westley straight after lunch for 57, adding Dan Lawrence caught on the boundary shortly afterwards. When he later switched to the Hayes Close End he had James Foster and Matt Quinn both caught behind in the space of 14 balls.

Clint McKay grabbed three of the other five wickets to fall to take his season's Championship tally to 26.

Essex are heading towards a sub-300 first-innings total for the first time this season. The Division Two leaders looked set fair for a sizeable total when Westley and Ravi Bopara put on 76 runs for the third wicket.

Bopara batted relatively cautiously for 57 overs before falling just before tea to the part-time bowling of Leicestershire captain Mark Cosgrove for a 61 from 168 balls. Thereafter wickets fell at regular intervals as Essex limped to a solitary bonus point before the premature close.

Essex had been in trouble from the start, McKay sending back Essex openers Jaik Mickleburgh and Nick Browne inside the first seven overs. Mickleburgh went in the first over, the ball coming back and dislodging his off-stump. Browne followed, lbw for 7. But Westley and Bopara steadied the ship, staying together for 31.3 overs before Westley exited to Shreck's third ball after lunch.

Westley had hit his ninth four of a 94-ball 57 straight after the break. It was a forceful innings with the majority of his boundaries coming in the arc between mid-on and mid-off, the others hit crisply through the covers. But he shouldered arms to a wide-ish delivery from Shreck, the ball hitting the back of his bat and diverting on to his stumps.

Lawrence replaced him, hammering Shreck for successive boundaries square to both sides of the wicket, and driving McKay for a scrumptious off-drive, before hooking Shreck to the well-baited trap at long leg where Rob Taylor was waiting. McKay picked up his third wicket when Jesse Ryder played on for 18.

Bopara's innings was built on watchfulness, and he did not collect his second boundary, a punch through the covers, until the 90th ball faced. His demise, 78 balls after that, was a collector's item. Cosgrove had only bowled one other over in the Championship this season, but with his third ball he had Bopara dragging on to one of his very occasional seamers.

Ryan ten Doesechate found gaps in the field, hitting Taylor for two fours in a row, before he was caught at the wicket flashing at Neil Dexter for 42 from 48 balls. Wicketkeeper Ned Eckersley took two more catches to make it three in five-and-a-half overs, providing Shreck with his third and fourth wickets, pouching Foster and Quinn.


With the light deteriorating, the umpires took the players off 12.2 overs early, with the last-wicket pair of David Masters and Jamie Porter facing the second new-ball.


Glamorgan 93/2 (21.5 ov) v Kent

Only 21.5 overs were possible on the first day of Glamorgan's Championship match with Kent. Glamorgan lost both openers but recovered well before prolonged rain through the afternoon led to a 4pm abandonment.

Will Bragg and Chris Cooke shared an undefeated third-wicket partnership of 86, after Kent had chosen to field first on a green-tinged pitch. Sam Northeast's decision was immediately vindicated when Matt Coles uprooted Mark Wallace's leg stump with his fifth ball

Six balls later, Darren Stevens trapped Jacques Rudolph leg before and, with the pitch assisting seam and swing, the visitors would have been confident of dismissing Glamorgan cheaply.

Coles, however, conceded 25 runs from his opening three overs, forcing his captain to take him off as Bragg and Cooke began Glamorgan's recovery. Stevens and Mitchell Claydon were not as expensive but there were too many loose deliveries that were punished, as Glamorgan raced along at almost five runs an over.

Bragg, Glamorgan's leading Championship run-scorer this season, again batted fluently, striking six fours from 61 balls, but Cooke was the more aggressive with eight boundaries, mainly from Coles' bowling - the Kent seamer returned to concede 10 off his fourth over for figures of 4-0-35-1, before rain stopped played 25 minutes before the scheduled lunch break.


Adam Rouse, the Kent wicketkeeper, would have been glad of the truncated day's play after he dislocated the little finger of his left hand, which was put back into place by the Kent physiotherapist following a lengthy stoppage.


Surrey 299/8 (96 ov) v Notts

On March 15 2009, a ragtag England side, fresh from being bundled out for 51 en route to defeat in the Test series, faced West Indies in a T20 game in Trinidad. That Andrew Strauss led England's T20 side embodied their frazzled state.

Predictably, England were thrashed. Amid the wreckage of an ignominious defeat a little solace came from the bat of Steven Davies: making his international debut aged 22, Davies top scored with a crisp 27.

On Friday, Davies turned 30, an age that invites self-reflection among all of us, but especially in those with career as short as that of professional sportsmen. Davies has much to be proud of: over 10,000 first-class runs at a tick above 40 apiece, and each made with an élan rarely spied on the county circuit.

And yet all these runs cannot quite detract from the abiding sense of Davies' career as being a little unfulfilled. In the seven years since his England debut, Davies has added just 12 more international caps, and has yet to play a Test match. "I'm fairly happy with it," Davies said of his career to date. "I've represented England, which was one of my goals as a young boy."

All his batting qualities were in evidence against Nottinghamshire at The Oval. While Surrey slipped to 172 for 6, Davies remained impervious to the sense of crisis mounting over Surrey's Division One status. As much as any shots that Kumar Sangakkara played during his 29, Davies's every stroke oozed elegance.

Consecutive boundaries off Brett Hutton - one glided through third man, the other caressed to fine leg of his hips - encapsulated Davies' ability to reach the boundary without any discernible effort. There are few more aesthetic batsmen on the county circuit, and here that elegance was married with grit: Davies played Jake Ball with meticulous care, leaving the ball with great precision. The shame was that Davies played on for 82 in the evening gloom. In his own judgement, it was a microcosm of his wider challenge to capitalise upon his good starts.

"It's just application. It's turning those 80s, like I got today, into 120 or 130. I once spoke to Rob Key about batting and he said, 'You can't score runs every day, but when it is your day, make sure it's a massive score.' For me, it's turning those decent scores into really big ones, and that will take me to the next level."

Davies' delicate cuts, played so late that the ball already seemed safely nestled inside the wicketkeeper's gloves, were also infused with a rather elegiac quality. His aptitude in the first-class game befits a stage greater than a dingy day at The Oval, but Davies might never get it.

The debate over Jonny Barstow's readiness as a Test wicketkeeper, for all his gluttonous recent run-scoring, emphasises that England have lacked an established Test keeper since Matt Prior's form deserted him three years ago.

It was once assumed that Davies would replace Prior. But the tragic death of Tom Maynard, a close friend, in 2012 triggered a collapse in his form, and later a battle with depression. After that fateful year Davies' form has remained good without ever quite being scintillating, but his England ambitions have been undermined by a decision he made early in the summer of 2014, to stop keeping wicket and play as a specialist batsman instead. Surrey were taken aback. Davies has still made easily enough runs to justify his place in the team, but far from enough to suggest to the England selectors he could play international cricket as a specialist batsman.

At the start of this season Davies declared his intent to regain the gloves and, in so doing, maximise his England ambitions. But halfway through the summer, Davies has not kept wicket in a single game, in any format. With each match that passes, so his international ambitions subtly recede.

To keep for Surrey, Davies needs to usurp Ben Foakes and also Gary Wilson, who has kept ahead of Davies in white-ball cricket. "I've got to bide my time," he said. "It's frustrating, but it's just the way it is. I'm in the last year of my contract so we'll see what happens at the end of the year."

If he did choose to leave, Davies would not be short of suitors - Essex, Nottinghamshire and Somerset are among the counties potentially attracted by his consistent run-scoring - but might need to accept less than his hefty wage at The Oval. Davies could face a conflict between pursuing his England ambitions and safeguarding his financial future.

The greatest reason for that is the eminent potential of Foakes. Trevor Bayliss has spoken about Foakes' potential as a future England keeper. Here there were glimpses of why: consecutive flicks to the leg-side boundary off Harry Gurney brimmed with panache, even if Foakes' stay at the crease was too fleeting. Despite Arun Harinath's 73, which became progressively more fluent as it progressed, there was something worryingly familiar about the meekness of Surrey's top order.


"We need to play tougher, smarter cricket," Davies said. That he did just that, allied to Nottinghamshire's reliance upon their opener pair of quicks and the counterpunching of Tom Curran, meant that Surrey were able to salvage a position of near-parity by the close. But, once again, both Davies and his club would have hoped for even better.


T20 Blast

Hampshire 133 v Somerset 136/4 Somerset won by 6 wickets (with 26 balls remaining)

Birmingham 144/9 v Lancashire 39/4 (target 58) Birmingham won by 18 runs (D/L method)

Derbyshire 153/9 v Yorkshire 67/3 (target 67) Yorkshire won by 1 run (D/L method)