The gauge of a player’s worth is arguably how they perform when the chips are down and Rikki Clarke’s display under the shadow of Lumley Castle highlighted his credentials as one of county cricket’s premier all-rounders.
For a contest between two recent champions Warwickshire, the 2012 winners, were denied the services of Keith Barker, Chris Wright and Boyd Rankin, their three senior fast bowlers. Enter Clarke from stage left to take the lead role.
Things did not initially go to plan as, despite Clarke’s early removal of Keaton Jennings, the team that took their pennant in 2013 progressed serenely to 184 for one on the back of Mark Stoneman’s enterprising hundred. But a fightback in the second half of the opening day evened up proceedings.
Clarke fully deserved his first five-wicket haul for four years and only the third of his career, a reward for perseverance and discipline of line and length. It took his tally of victims for the season to 29, his highest since 2011.
“We were staring down the barrel of a pretty big score at one stage but we stuck at it and we have an opportunity to get as close to them as we can, if not beyond, and then apply pressure with the ball again,” Clarke said.
It was the returning Chris Woakes, who proved his match readiness while guesting for Nottinghamshire in the Second XI Championship last week, who provided the crucial breakthrough when he terminated a second-wicket stand of 153 with a delivery that got Scott Borthwick in a tangle of bat and pads.
Having not played a competitive match since the World Cup shemozzle against Bangladesh in March due to foot and knee injuries the 26-year-old got through four spells, the successful second also including the spilling of Paul Collingwood at first slip by Varun Chopra.
Tom Milnes would have been cheered by his own comeback after a torrid start to his first appearance for two years. Stoneman was particularly savage during his initial burst of 5-0-34-0, depositing one pull over midwicket for six to reach a 76-ball 50. Revenge was delivered when Milnes rushed one through a lackadaisical prod - one of six wickets for 82 runs that redressed the balance of the contest.
Clarke won contrasting leg before awards against Michael Richardson, who walked, and Collingwood, who visibly struggled to contain his displeasure, before returning to mop up the tail with the second new ball.
But with their most decorated batsman, Jonathan Trott, on paternity leave, Warwickshire now face a grind to achieve parity but Stoneman, the one man to have mastered the surface, does not anticipate that happening. “If our lads are on song I can see us knocking them over for under 200,” he said.
