Colwyn Bay cricket club has hosted first-class cricket since 1966 and it is a favourite among county cricket’s band of out-ground travellers. It is easy to see why they like this place. Not only is it 200 metres from the beautiful north Wales coastline but it is wonderfully intimate, too. Rarely can spectators get quite as close to first-class action as at Colwyn Bay.
The club eschew the advertising hoardings that usually circleg grounds and instead allow chairs right up to the boundary edge. And at the end of the first day some of thos ewho took advantage will have had bruised legs; this was a day on which the ball flew over the rope 62 times.
Unless they were strongly partisan, they will not have minded the bruises, though, because they were witness to a fine exhibition of batting by Lancashire’s Alviro Petersen and Ashwell Prince. The pair batted together for almost two full sessions in an unbroken third-wicket partnership of 321 that broke the records for the highest by a Lancashire pair against Glamorgan and highest at Colwyn Bay, beating the 281 set by Steve James and Mike Powell.
It was, in truth, a batting clinic, a demonstration of quality and experience which meant Petersen passed 13,000 first-class runs and Prince 1,200 Championship runs this season. They came together in the over just after lunch with the score on 104 and batted together for five hours. Every shot in the manual was on display from delicate dabs to third man to elegant drives through the covers to lusty blows over midwicket.
Prince passed 150 in the 91st over before, three balls later, Petersen brought up his double century with a tickle to fine-leg and the day was summed up by a shout of “well bowled” from the crowd after Dean Cosker bowled two consecutive dot balls. It was a long and tough day for Glamorgan, who did little wrong on a pitch that had no pace or bounce and was offering no turn or lateral movement either.
The pitch usually offers at least a bit of turn and both sides picked two spinners. Cosker’s return to the Glamorgan side, having been left out in favour of Andrew Salter for much of the season, was not a happy one. Petersen took a shine to his bowling, sending consecutive deliveries into the car park and then the road. Cosker’s six overs of the day went for 38.
The seam bowlers fared no better, the slow pace of the pitch negating the extra bounce that the opening bowler Michael Hogan usually gets, and things got so desperate that by the evening session the left-arm seamer Graham Wagg gave up on bowling seam up in favour of left-arm spin.
Only one wicket fell in each of the first two sessions. Paul Horton went in the seventh over of the day and can consider himself unlucky after being trapped lbw by Hogan to one that kept very low. The other wicket to fall was that of Karl Brown, who had made a good-looking half-century before being bowled by David Lloyd.
But from there Prince and Petersen made batting look effortless,strong off both front and back foot and driving, cutting, sweeping with ease. Even the arrival of the new ball made no difference. They batted on through the evening session taking apart everything that Glamorgan tried.
Glamorgan’s impressive season in which they had gone unbeaten in the Championship and kept themselves in the hunt for promotion suffered a setback last week when they lost to Essex, putting a 40-point gap between them and second-placed Surrey. They do have a game in hand over the top two but face a mountainous task to get a win from this match.
