The scorecard suggests an extraordinary day’s play and it does not lie. There were two big hundreds for Marcus Trescothick and James Hildreth, five ducks leaving an unhappy quintet of Somerset batsmen contemplating a pair and a flurry of wickets for James Harris. Two batsmen plus extras contributed 360 runs, the other nine 48 runs. Championship cricket dull? Not if you asked any of a good, anoraked crowd at Taunton, where Somerset flogged the visiting bowlers for five hours before subsiding from 377-3 to 408 all out in the final session.
Trescothick’s innings of 140 recalled his glory days. He was in a mood to dominate. The cuts and cover drives sped to the off-side boundary. Steven Finn tested him and the reflexes were swift enough. For him it must have been a reassuring innings; the magic remains even if he has lost a yard or two between the wickets.
Trescothick’s determination to dictate was typified by an over he faced from Ollie Rayner. His outside edge was beaten twice as he played a dutiful forward defensive. So to the next ball, ostensibly identical to its predecessors, he unfurled a slogsweep for six, followed by a paddle sweep for four. In the spirit of the day he was finally caught on the boundary against the enticing left-arm spin of Adam Voges.
Hildreth was equally aggressive, but luckier. He was dropped before scoring and then on 49 presented the easiest catch imaginable when attempting to pull a ball from Finn. Incredibly Nick Gubbins spilt the ball at square leg. Hildreth would go on to score 187, an impish, exuberant, innings brimful of cuts and square drives, which ended when an upper cut was adroitly held at third man.
Then in the final session Somerset collapsed like dominoes, losing seven wickets for 28 runs – they contrived something similar in their first match against Durham. Harris kept finding the edges of callow new batsmen and the slip cordon held on to the chances. Harris’s figures (5-83) reflect his capacity to find late swing.
The scorecard is not quite so kind to Finn, who finished with 2-82. He took some punishment from Trescothick and Hildreth and had to deal with the anguish of that dropped catch. He responded wellto that setback, bowling faster and eventually putting the wind up Somerset’s fickle lower order. As for Monday after such a frenetic start to the game no one has a clue what is going to happen, but it may be worth turning up on time to find out.
