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Tom Bailey sealed his position as the leading wicket-taker in Division One as relegated Lancashire hurtled to victory

ECB Reporters Network26-Sep-2018
ScorecardLancashire’s comfortable eight-wicket victory over Hampshire could hardly have been more bittersweet. Not only had their relegation to Division Two been confirmed on the second day, the impending defeat of Nottinghamshire on the third was expected to confirm that if Lancashire had reached a third batting point on the second day – they fell 27 runs short – they would have stayed up.Keaton Jennings, who is about to face an England tour in Sri Lanka that could decide his Test future, supervised Lancashire’s chase for 113. They got home in 13 overs by eight wickets, losing two wickets in two balls during their chase of 113, as Hampshire’s veteran quick Fidel Edwards took his season’s tally to 54 wickets.Edwards found the outside of Alex Davies’ bat to bring a diving catch for Sam Northeast at third slip before producing a bullet delivery to dislodge debutant Brooke Guest’s off-stump.Jennings, though, carried Lancashire over the line in attacking style, carting Kyle Abbott for four boundaries in his first over.Liam Livingstone, 48 not out, added the remaining 73 with Jennings in aggressive style with the captain completing the eight-wicket victory by smashing Ian Holland over the top of the leg side in successive balls.Lewis McManus had started the day alongside Abbott with a lead of 92, but only four runs were added before the first of the two remaining wickets fell. Abbott, who ended the season with a creditable batting average of almost 26 from No. 10, was bowled by a big inswinger from Tom Bailey for 21McManus, now with Fidel Edwards, eked Hampshire’s lead over 100 before the West Indian was bowled, again by Bailey – who claimed eight wickets in the match.The scalp meant Bailey completed the campaign as the highest wicket-taker in Division One, with 64 wickets – seven more than teammate Graham Onions and Essex’s Jamie Porter, who had the chance to add more in an unfinished match at Kia Oval.It also meant McManus was left stranded on 44 on his first Championship appearance since June, having lost the wicketkeeping gloves to Tom Alsop.The defeat means Hampshire will have to wait until after Yorkshire’s match with Worcestershire is concluded to discover whether they finish fourth, for the first time in the club’s history, or fifth.

The franchise has also snapped up 18-year-old Nepal legspinner Sandeep Lamichhane

ESPNcricinfo staff26-Oct-2018After making his debut in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) earlier this year, David Warner is set for a Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) debut, having signed with Sylhet Sixers. The franchise also snapped up 18-year-old Nepal legspinner Sandeep Lamichhane, completing its quota of two direct overseas signings for the 2018-19 BPL.Sylhet also added wicketkeeper-batsman Liton Das to their roster from Comilla Victorians in addition to retaining batsmen Sabbir Rahman and Nasir Hossain and Pakistan left-arm quick Sohail Tanvir.Warner is currently into the seventh month of a one-year ban handed to him by Cricket Australia for his part in the Newlands ball-tampering scandal. He was not allowed to play for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL, but returned to competitive cricket with a stint with Winnipeg Hawks in the Global T20 Cananda in June and July this year. He subsequently signed with St Lucia Stars in the CPL, but his form wasn’t encouraging. After managing 109 runs in eight innings at a strike-rate of 114.73 in the GLT20, he scored 220 runs in nine innings at a strike-rate of 111.67 in the CPL and found particularly bizarre ways to get out.However, he did hit form, when he struck a 98-ball hundred in Sydney grade cricket against an attack that included Josh Hazlewood.The BPL is scheduled to begin on January 5, 2019, with the draft to be held on October 28 this year. This season, all franchises have been allowed to pick a maximum of two foreign players, who had not played in the 2017-18 BPL.

CoA chief says BCCI being totally transparent in everything and there’s nothing one would want to know about it that’s not there on its website

Nagraj Gollapudi05-Oct-2018The BCCI will legally contest the decision of the Central Information Commission (CIC), an appellate regulatory body of the Indian government, to bring it under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The BCCI, which had already filed a plea in the Madras High Court in 2013 to contest against being brought under the RTI, will now seek a stay on the CIC order announced earlier this week.The RTI is a path-breaking federal law established in 2005, which makes the working of high-profile organisations open to public scrutiny. The BCCI has strongly resisted the demands to be brought under the ambit of the RTI on two grounds. Firstly, it has stressed that it is a society registered in Tamil Nadu and does not receive any government funds. And that leads to its second point, which is that the BCCI should be treated as a private entity and not as a public authority.Vinod Rai, the chairman of the Committee of Administrators (CoA) that has been asked to oversee the BCCI till fresh elections are conducted, said that the board had informed the CIC that matter was sub-judice. The board had sought some time before the decision was enforced but M Sridhar Acharyulu, the CIC commissioner, declined that request and imposed the order. It asked the BCCI to put in place the infrastructure and start receiving RTI pleas from the public within 15 days from its order.But the BCCI has indicated that it will contest the order. “The BCCI will seek a stay on the order of the CIC,” Rai told ESPNcricinfo.According to Rai, everything except details pertaining to a few key issues would be put on the BCCI website. “We have been practising transparency and we have been totally transparent in absolutely everything we are doing,” Rai said. “Except details of team meetings, minutes of team selections, information regarding injury to players, anti-doping process and details concerning anti-corruption investigations, we are trying to put all other details on the BCCI website.”The CIC pointed out the BCCI should be “listed” as a National Sports Federation (NSF) despite being a non-government organisation. To support its case, the CIC spelt out sections of the Law Commission of India, that recently had concluded that the BCCI was “virtually” an NSF and the Indian government should recognise the same. The Law Commission had pointed out that despite it playing a “monopolistic” in the regulation of cricket, the BCCI had been “flying under the radar” of public scrutiny.The CIC echoed the same sentiment. “In the absence of effective self-regulation and non-applicability of public law to scrutinise and review the functioning of the sports body, the necessity of public scrutiny arose and the only way for that is through the RTI Act.”The CIC locked horns with the BCCI for the first time in 2013 when Madhu Agarwal, an RTI activist, sought from the Indian board information on some of its policies. The BCCI declined to entertain Agarwal’s request, so she approached the CIC. The BCCI then approached the Madras High Court, after the CIC asked it to attend a hearing. On July 24, 2013, the court issued a stay order and since then the case has not been heard.However, last December another RTI activist Geeta Rani wanted the BCCI to answer specific questions related to how it was given the powers of a public body. Rani approached the CIC this April and on July 10, the appellate body ruled: “The commission thinks in public interest, in the interest of fair cricket and for fair process of selection of Indian cricket team members, the BCCI should be made transparent, accountable and answerable under the Right to Information Act, 2005.”The CIC sought an explanation from the BCCI as to why it should not be called a public authority despite the recommendation of the Law Commission as well as various pronouncements by the Supreme Court and various High Courts as well as the Lodha Committee.Acharyulu claims the BCCI did not respond to the CIC till October 1, the day the commission issued its latest order. In its defence, the BCCI presented a copy of the stay order given by the Madras High Court in 2013.However this March, concerned by the cases remaining pending for “unduly” period, the Supreme Court passed a judgement stating that any stay would lapse after a period of six months from that day – March 28, 2018 – unless a “speaking order” extending a stay was granted in the intervening period. Also, the extension should only be granted under “exceptional circumstances wherein the continuation of the stay order is warranted more than expeditious final disposal of the trial”.Rai said his role is for a limited period, but he does not want to “saddle” the BCCI with a decision he did not contest. He himself believed that the BCCI could not come under the RTI purview. “In principle, I want the BCCI to be a totally transparent body, but I do not want to be under the guillotine of having to reply [to RTI requests] in a set amount of time. Because then all kinds of requests will start coming. I am sure there is nothing that you would want to know [that is] not there on the BCCI website. And we are engaging in making it more vibrant.”

A 170-run opening stand between Alex Doolan and Jordan Silk has given the Tigers a fighting chance after all but erasing an enormous first-innings deficit against Victoria

The Report by Alex Malcolm18-Nov-2018Alex Doolan plays one on the off side•Getty Images

A 170-run opening stand between Tasmania pair Alex Doolan and Jordan Silk has given the Tigers a fighting chance after all but erasing an enormous first-innings deficit against Victoria at Bellerive Oval.The Tigers began their second innings 201 runs behind the visitors. Doolan and Silk, however, enjoyed some good batting conditions to put together Tasmania’s biggest opening stand of the season and close within 31 runs of the lead.Doolan made 94 from 119 balls with 11 fours and a six. He seemed destined for his second century of the season but was caught behind edging a very short-and-wide ball from Peter Siddle.Nonetheless, Doolan has scored more runs than anyone else in the Sheffield Shield this season thus far. It was his fifth score of 50-plus for the season, and the second time in consecutive matches he has fallen in the 90s after making 115 in the opening match of the season.Silk remained unbeaten on 77 at stumps after the Tigers also lost Beau Webster late in the day.Earlier, Victoria’s tail helped the visitors build the 201-run lead. Peter Siddle, Scott Boland and Jon Holland added 83 for the last two wickets. Siddle was the last man out for 42 after he and Holland put on 50 for the 10th wicket. Tigers quick Riley Meredith finished with 4 for 61, his best figures in his four-game Shield career to date.

Steve O’Keefe claimed four wickets but a result always appeared unlikely on the final day on a placid surface

Alex Malcolm10-Dec-2018Steve O’Keefe bagged four wickets and Jake Lehmann made a half-century as New South Wales and South Australia played out a tame draw on a very flat surface at the SCG.South Australia began the day 143 runs behind the Blues with only two results really possible. They batted sensibly and conservatively to ensure a loss was taken out of the equation.The Redbacks top five all faced a minimum of 71 balls with no player scoring less than 22. The opening pair put on 47 before O’Keefe claimed his first of the day with Conor McInerney given out caught at bat pad.Jake Weatherald sliced a ball to backward point for 36 before Kelvin Smith chopped on to one that kept low for 22.Callum Ferguson was claimed by a superb catch from Moises Henriques at silly mid-off, scooping a ball one-handed that would have landed on the cut strip.Lehmann held his nerve throughout to reach his second half-century of the match and pass fifty for the fifth time this Sheffield Shield season. He was one of only two players not to fall to O’Keefe with debutant Greg West claiming both Lehmann and Tom Cooper late in the day. The game was called off with South Australia six down and 78 runs ahead.

Aditya Sarwate’s third wicket of the day could well be the most important of the final

Saurabh Somani in Nagpur04-Feb-2019A well-laid plan and a bowler who could execute it to precision were the ingredients that gave Vidarbha Cheteshwar Pujara’s prized wicket for just 1 in the Ranji Trophy 2018-19 final on Monday.Pujara had come out with Saurashtra at 79 for 2 in reply to Vidarbha’s 312, and the two best opposition bowlers were in operation: Umesh Yadav from the Secretary End, and Aditya Sarwate from the Pavilion End. Sarwate had bowled two spells of two overs each from the other end before changing, and had just dismissed Vishwaraj Jadeja, the batsman playing for the turn to the arm ball and trapped in front.Pujara had one ball to face in the over, the 26th, which he came forward to, and it rolled off a thick bottom edge. Snell Patel didn’t get off strike in Umesh’s next over, and when Sarwate came back, a forward short leg was put in place immediately. A slip and silly point, placed smartly parallel to the stumps, were already there, and Vidarbha were telling Pujara that they were attacking both his outside and inside edges.The silly-point fielder was almost a short gully, waiting to pouch anything that would fly off the outside edge, however softly Pujara might tap it. The close-in cordon showed how well Vidarbha’s think tank, led by head coach Chandrakant Pandit, had read the pitch as well as the batsman – the bounce was low, and Pujara plays with soft hands, so the edges were not going to carry straight and high.ALSO READ: Jaffer and Pujara: genial giants of domestic cricketTo make the plan work, Sarwate bowled straight lines, and a length the forced the batsman to play him. Pujara had already jumped out of the crease a couple of times to defend, but had spotted the dangers. So he was trying to defend from the crease, but was still tentative. He played out a maiden.In his next over, Sarwate maintained the same line of attack. The first ball, Pujara prodded towards short leg. The next one, he again lunged forward to defend, but then improvised to tap the ball just short of the close-in fielder on the off side. The slight bounce and turn might have created a sliver of doubt in Pujara’s mind as he appeared to be in two minds trying to defend the next delivery. The ball had pitched on a length that drew him forward, but Pujara stopped midway, attempted to play it down, but the bounce meant a thick outside edge off the top of his bat and Wasim Jaffer neatly, and gleefully, accepted the offering.”Pujara is the biggest wicket I’ve got,” Sarwate said after the day’s play. “We have watched him a lot, and we saw him on the Australia tour also. We felt that initially, he is a bit tentative, and he jabs at the ball. That is why we kept a short leg. If the odd ball turns, then there is a silly point. Maybe he played half-cocked which is why he got out.”We plan the field setting after watching him on TV. If you keep fielders in his weak areas at the start, then his shots get curtailed. He had just come to the crease, with tea also not far away. So our plan was to attack. We didn’t want to let him step out, which he does a lot. We thought the more we make him play from the crease, the better it will be for us.”Vijay Dahiya, the former India wicketkeeper who was commentating on TV at the time, said the wicket was a tribute to Vidarbha’s smart planning. “The field placement according to me is always as per the batsman. Full marks to Vidarbha’s management here,” Dahiya told ESPNcricinfo. “There had been a partnership going on earlier, and there was not a short-leg fielder then. Pujara coming in, such a big name, and straightaway there was a short leg in. And that silly point fielder was absolutely adjacent there. That’s how you take big wickets, with a game plan.”If you look at this pitch, there is not much bounce, so it’s not going to go straight. Even the catch that went to slip, it didn’t carry at normal height, it was going down. When you don’t have enough bounce, you try and pitch it inside. Full marks to their thinking, especially against someone who has had a fantastic Australia trip, and came from the semi-finals scoring a match-winning 131 not out. Credit goes to the bowler as well in bowling in the right area.”The wicket took Sarwate’s season’s tally to 47. In Vidarbha’s semi-final win against Kerala, which was wrapped up inside two days, Sarwate didn’t get to bowl a single ball, with Umesh and his fellow pacers cleaning up the opposition. Back at the VCA Stadium in Nagpur with its spin-friendly pitch, Sarwate may have just bowled the most significant 10 balls of the game.

Ajinkya Rahane will be leading Mumbai while wicketkeeper-batsman Wriddhiman Saha is likely to be named in the Bengal squad

ESPNcricinfo staff17-Feb-2019The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, India’s domestic T20 competition, begins on February 21 and will see plenty of its best players in action. Not least among them Prithvi Shaw, who is set to mark his return from an ankle injury he sustained in December. The young Mumbai opener struck a century on Test debut in 2018 and impressed India captain Virat Kohli enough that he said “I don’t think any of us were even 10 percent of what he is at 18-19.”Another man on the comeback trail is wicketkeeper-batsman Wriddhiman Saha. Bengal have not announced their squad yet but it is likely he will be part of it, having recently begun training again after a long time battling shoulder issues.
Ajinkya Rahane will be leading Mumbai, and considering he wasn’t picked in the Indian side to play the Australia ODIs next month, might be keen to use the opportunity to change the selectors’ mind before the final squad for the World Cup is announced in April. Shreyas Iyer and Shardul Thakur will also be part of Mumbai’s campaign which begins with a match against Sikkim on Thursday.Test specialist Ishant Sharma will also return to action after his excellent performances to help India win the Border-Gavaskar Trophy earlier this year. He has not played competitive cricket since early January but will be leading the defending T20 champions Delhi when they begin their tournament with a match against Jharkhand on Thursday.Karnataka have some heavyweights in their side as well with Mayank Agarwal, brimming from the confidence of a successful start to his India career, leading their batting line-up. Manish Pandey remains captain and Karun Nair his deputy. They play Assam on Thursday.Tamil Nadu, too, host a variety of stars, with R Ashwin, India’s premier Test spinner, leading them and Vijay Shankar, the allrounder who made a name for himself in New Zealand, lending batting firepower. They face Rajasthan in their season opener on Thursday.Click here for the Syed Mushtaq Ali squads.

New Zealand captain is just seven points behind his Indian counterpart in the ICC rankings

ESPNcricinfo staff04-Mar-2019Kane Williamson’s unbeaten 200 in the first Test against Bangladesh in Hamilton, which New Zealand won by an innings and 52 runs, has propelled him to a career-high 915 points in the ICC rankings.That puts him only marginally behind Virat Kohli, who is at No. 1 on the table, but unlike Williamson, who has two more Test matches against Bangladesh in the ongoing series, the India captain has no long-format cricket lined up in the immediate future.Williamson headlined a remarkable New Zealand batting performance in Hamilton, where they rode on his second Test double-century and centuries from openers Jeet Raval and Tom Latham to score their highest Test total of 715 for 6 declared in their only innings.Starting the Test with 897 points against his name, Williamson moved up to within striking distance of the top spot for the second time in his career – he was No. 1 briefly in late 2015.The 915 points Williamson currently has are also the highest ever for a New Zealander in Test cricket. Richard Hadlee had gone past the 900 mark – the only other player from the country to do so – in the bowlers’ chart during his career, getting to 909.In other updates, Latham has moved up to No. 11 among batsmen, while Raval has gone to No. 33 after hitting his maiden Test century. Trent Boult and Tim Southee remained in the top ten among the bowlers, with Neil Wagner moving up to 11th spot.For Bangladesh, the brightest sparks in the Test were Tamim Iqbal, who scored 126 and 74, and Mahmudullah and Soumya Sarkar, who hit 146 and 149 respectively in the second innings. Tamim slotted in at No. 25 as a result, Mahmudullah at No. 40 and Soumya at No. 67.

The rivalry between Dhoni’s three-time champions and Kohli’s men has always been a fiery one, and the perfect match-up to start IPL 2019 off with

The Preview by Shashank Kishore22-Mar-20198:43

Lungi Ngidi’s absence might hurt Chennai Super Kings – Brad Hodge

Big Picture

Unless you’re totally invested in the IPL – or any league for that matter – it can at times be hard to remember games that have finished even as recently as 48 hours ago. But in a hectic calendar and the usual haze of fours and sixes, this giant of a rivalry stands out: Chennai Super Kings v Royal Challengers Bangalore.Numbers-wise, there’s no reason to believe this is a rivalry at all. Super Kings are three-time winners, Royal Challengers are three-time chokers in the final. Royal Challengers have lost six out of their seven games at MA Chidambaram Stadium, including two cup finals – IPL 2011 and the Champions League T20 later that year. And Royal Challengers haven’t beaten Dhoni’s men since 2014; even discounting Super Kings’ two-year absence, that’s a long time. What’s the big fuss then? Try asking fans from both sides who they wouldn’t want to lose to. And don’t be swayed by what Mumbai Indians say.A number of these losses have come from winning positions. Remember Albie Morkel smashing Virat Kohli for 28 off the first six balls he faced to clinch a winner? Or RP Singh’s epic no-ball that had Ravindra Jadeja pick out third man only to win a thriller and trigger the ‘Sir Jadeja’ memes? Remember Dhoni’s monstrous takedown of Royal Challengers’ death-bowling in a high-scoring last-over thriller last year? These are likely to be a handful of games producers will slot in while programming episodes of IPL classics.Twelve thousand fans turned up for Super Kings’ training recently. Most of them, and many others, will be there before the first ball is bowled come Saturday. The opening ceremony has been done away with, but the tournament couldn’t have asked for a better opener.PTI

In the news

He pulled out of the Karachi leg of the PSL to manage his back niggle, but AB de Villiers is on track to play the opener. Royal Challengers’ New Zealand duo of Colin de Grandhomme and Tim Southee have just arrived on match-eve, having finished a hectic international home summer. Marcus Stoinis and Nathan Coulter-Nile are in the UAE for a series against Pakistan.Super Kings’ Mitchell Santner, who missed the previous season, will also have had little acclimatisation time, having just joined the squad following the last round of the Plunket Shield matches in New Zealand.

Previous meeting

Pune, 2018: Jadeja took out Kohli first ball. Harbhajan Singh took out de Villiers first ball. Super Kings finished off Royal Challengers for 127 and at the end of it all, MS Dhoni just smiled. He wielded a slow pitch like a magic wand, turning a docile bowling attack – economy rate of 9.19 – into a mythical match-winning entity.

Likely XIs

Chennai Super Kings: 1 Shane Watson, 2 Faf du Plessis, 3 Suresh Raina, 4 Ambati Rayudu, 5 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 6 Kedar Jadhav, 7 Dwayne Bravo, 8 Ravindra Jadeja, 9 Deepak Chahar, 10 David Willey, 11 Mohit SharmaRoyal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Parthiv Patel (wk), 2 Moeen Ali, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Shimron Hetmyer, 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Tim Southee, 9 Umesh Yadav, 10 Mohammad Siraj, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal

Strategy punt

• Last season, Umesh Yadav was the best bowler in the Powerplays with 14 wickets – the most in this period – with an economy rate of just 6.70. So there is perhaps a case for Kohli to use him upfront and utilise Tim Southee’s experience at the death. They also need a seasoned campaigner there, considering their death overs were by far the worst – they went for 11.90 in the last six – among all franchises.
• Shimron Hetmyer’s explosive game may well give Royal Challengers a batting identity beyond de Villiers and Kohli, but he doesn’t start well against spin, as a dot-ball percentage of 44.3 and strike rate of 126 suggest. Super Kings could look to exploit this weakness by utilising Jadeja, Jadhav, Santner, if he plays, or even Raina’s part-time spin to counter this.

Stats that matter

• Kohli’s 732 runs are the most by a batsman against Super Kings in the IPL. He also has the most number of 30-plus scores (12) against them. Similarly, his counterpart Dhoni’s 710 runs are the most by a batsman against Royal Challengers in the IPL.
• The only Super Kings bowler to have dismissed de Villiers more than once in the current squad is Imran Tahir. Will he make the XI, though?
• He has retired from internationals, and even as his countrymen have struggled in limited-overs cricket over the last 12 months, Shane Watson has grown from strength to strength. He comes into the tournament having finished the PSL as the highest run-scorer (430 runs in 12 innings). He didn’t do too badly in the Big Bash League in December-January either, finishing among the top-ten run-getters.

Paul Edwards at Old Trafford14-May-2019
There was the unmistakable smack of modernity about the cricket at Old Trafford on the first day of this game – yet there was also a pleasing air of timelessness. For all that Northamptonshire’s side contained two loan signings and Lancashire’s its third Australian debutant of the season, the cosmopolitan make-up of the teams could not quite silence echoes from say, the 1960s, when the first-class season comprised nothing more than a knockout competition and the three-day County Championship.Though so much has changed, today’s county professionals still know what their predecessors faced. Both these teams have over two months of red-ball games ahead of them and whatever the transient gaiety of the Blast might yield, even white-ball specialists like Luke Wright insist that it is upon championship performances that most cricketers are still judged.So Richard Gleeson will be a contented man this Tuesday evening. Injured at the start of the season and left out of Lancashire’s side for the Royal London Cup, Gleeson made good use of a lively first-day pitch to take 5 for 63 against the county to whom he owes so much for helping him revive his career. By sticking to a tight line, he justified Dane Vilas’s decision to bat first, a choice whose merit was not lessened by the dismissal five overs before the close of Haseeb Hameed, caught behind for 7 when he pushed forward to a good ball from Ben Sanderson.That wicket was a setback for Lancashire but it hardly diminished the achievement of their quartet of seamers in dismissing Northamptonshire for 230 on a wicket which, if true to form, should get better. Despite a fine fifty by Luke Wood and a typically determined 48 from Luke Procter on a ground he knows well, Alex Wakely’s batsmen had been restricted by Lancashire’s four pace bowlers operating in impressive harness. At the day’s end Gleeson correctly pointed out that both Tom Bailey and Saqib Mahmood had done all that could be asked yet it was he and Graham Onions who had taken nine of the wickets.Yet to sharpen that distinction even further it was Gleeson who dismissed four of the top five in Northamptonshire’s order after the game had begun in what some may now label the traditional fashion with a tossed coin. Surprisingly to some, Lancashire asked Northants to bat, which is logically what the visitors wanted to do, but the first session neither justified nor mocked Vilas’s tactic. The accumulation of 80 runs was balanced by the dismissals of both Ricardo Vasconcelos and Wakely, both of whom were caught behind by Lancashire’s wicketkeeper-captain off Gleeson.Northamptonshire’s problems were compounded when Rob Newton went down with a groin problem – a beguiling euphemism covering a multitude of agonies – and required a runner for the rest of his innings. Having displayed chivalry a few moments earlier – more of that later – Vasconcelos now added selflessness to his virtues by agreeing to do the job.That problem, though, was minor when set beside the disasters that befell the visitors in the first hour after lunch. On the resumption Blackpool-born Gleeson returned to the attack and removed both Newton for 32 and Rob Keogh for 3, both courtesy of leg-before decisions. That left the visitors on 101 for 4 but worse was to follow in the next over when Rob Jones dived to take a superb gully catch off Bailey and send Josh Cobb on his way on his way for nought. Onions may then have been fortunate to get a leg-before decision against Temba Bavuma but the South African debutant’s dismissal for 39 left his side on 119 for 6.Almost all the rest of the session, however, was dominated by a shrewd partnership between Procter, who worked the ball around well, and the Nottinghamshire loanee, Wood who cut the Lancashire bowlers with impressive ease whenever they strayed. Just before the close of an absorbing session Procter was caught at slip by Keaton Jennings for 48 when driving at Gleeson, thus giving the bowler his maiden five-wicket haul for Lancashire in what was his first game of the season and also his home debut. That wicket ended Procter’s useful 70-run stand for the seventh wicket with Wood and it was also the prelude to Onions taking the last three wickets in the hour after tea.Wood perhaps deserves more than to be sent on loan so frequently yet Worcestershire and Northamptonshire’s keenness to take him reflects well on his professionalism. He was eventually out for 66 when Bailey got under a mighty hook at long leg and dived to take an excellent catch.That piece of athleticism and judgement was rightly applauded yet maybe the best moment of the day – and one which recalled the game’s ethos – had occurred five hours earlier when Vasconcelos needed only Vilas’ assurance that a very low catch off Gleeson had carried before making his way back to the pavilion. It rather recalled the time in another fixture between these sides when Ken Higgs was enraged by David Steele’s failure to walk after what the bowler considered an obvious edge.Those were the days when Steele and Higgs caught the same train to Old Trafford for such games from their homes in the Potteries. But that evening, when he saw the Northamptonshire batsman waiting on the platform, Higgs spurned even the possibility of travelling in the next carriage to someone he believed guilty of sharp practice; instead, he plonked his vast arse on a seat in Piccadilly station and awaited the next departure to Stoke.