County Championship 2024. Division 1. Somerset v Essex 3rd and 4th May. Taunton.

Jack Leach, (knee injury) and Tom Abell (hamstring) were unavailable.

Somerset. M.T. Renshaw, S.R. Dickson, T.A. Lammonby, A.R.I. Umeed, T. Banton, J.E.K. Rew (w), L. Gregory (c), C. Overton, M. Pretorius, J.H. Davey, J.T. Ball.

Essex. N.L.J. Browne, D. Elgar, T. Westley (c), J.M. Cox, M.J.J. Critchley, N.R.M. Thain, H.G. Duke (w), S.R. Harmer, S. Snater, S.J. Cook, J.A. Porter.

Toss. Somerset. Elected to field.

Overnight. Essex 156 and 6 for 0. Somerset 128. Essex lead by 34 runs with ten second innings wickets standing.

Final day 4th May – A titanic struggle

The second and final day of this match was a titanic struggle between two sides who charged relentlessly at each other just as they had on the first day. Essex edged the morning session, walking off for lunch with a lead of 123 with six wickets standing on a difficult pitch on which Somerset had been bowled out for 128 in their first innings. Then, in a stunning fightback after lunch, the Somerset bowlers took the final six Essex wickets for 43 runs to leave their side needing 167 to win. It would mean making the highest score of the match with little sign of the pitch easing. It would be a long second half of the day for supporters of both sides as the two teams fought, gruelling ball by gruelling ball, over those 167 runs.

The day began as it went on, with bats repeatedly being beaten or missing balls which showed themselves only too capable of sliding past the edge. Time and again, despairing arms were thrown in the air by players, and gasps from supporters going through paroxysms of despair or relief repeatedly rent the air. The first six overs encapsulated all that followed. Dean Elgar, once of Somerset, was beaten by Craig Overton’s first ball. He survived a leg before wicket appeal from the fifth but had driven the third through extra cover, emphatically and perfectly, for four. Sam Cook, night watching at the other end, also survived a leg before wicket appeal, from Josh Davey, and then played and missed at that endlessly evasive ball.

In Overton’s second over, Elgar was beaten again but then pushed to cover to retain the strike. To the fourth ball of Davey’s third over, he attempted to glance a ball which shaded further to leg as it came off the pitch before sliding off the chasing bat and into James Rew’s increasingly safe hands. Essex 11 for 1. Elgar 5. Lead 39. Cook was well beaten by a ball from Davey, the Somerset supporter in front of me exclaiming, “Oh! Well bowled! Well bowled!” as applause broke out around the ground. In the next over, Cook pushed Overton to midwicket for two before edging him to fourth slip. The ball was palmed up and Andy Umeed at third slip took a neat catch to a huge cheer. It had been six overs which left the watcher breathless and Essex’s second innings on 15 for 2, Cook 6. Lead 43.

As the cheer for Cook’s wicket subsided, the realisation sank in that Somerset would need to continue taking wickets at some pace if their eventual target was not to climb out of reach. “We don’t want to have to chase more than 200 on this,” someone said. That provoked a thought that, given the rapidity with which wickets had fallen, and were still falling, even 200 might prove too many. Nick Browne and Tom Westley now worked to give effect to the Somerset fear, and doubtless the Essex hope. A drive for four through extra cover from Browne and a neat turn to the Caddick Pavilion boundary from Westley, both off Overton, took the Essex lead to 58. The ball though was still flying past bats, particularly from Davey. Eventually he struck Westley on the pads. “That looked out!” someone said, jerking forward in his seat, the umpire following the comment with a slowly raised finger. At 37 for 3, Westley 11, Essex led by 65, a sliver ahead in the match, but still within reach.

So close did the match feel that the hopes and fears raised by any beaten bat or loud appeal were painfully intense. When Migael Pretorius replaced Overton, his first two balls to Browne drifted to leg and were each turned behind square for two. When Lewis Gregory replaced Davey, he overpitched and the new batter, Ben Cox, drove him through backward point and then square to the Ondaatje boundary for two fours. Those runs, in such a tight situation were like daggers prodding at the Somerset heart. They took Essex to 52 for 3 and a lead of 80 which brought 200 worryingly within range. “Would Essex have begun two new spells with looseners?” asked one anxious voice, perhaps reflecting on the ability of Cook and Jamie Porter to hit their mark from the outset.

Then, as the bowlers settled, the ball began to pass the bat again, Pretorius beating Browne twice in an over and finding the edge, although the ball ran to the Colin Atkinson boundary for four. An on drive off Gregory did further damage to the Somerset cause as it crossed the same boundary, but the next ball, the match continuing to provide a twist in response to every turn, found the edge again. This time, the ball looped to gully and Tom Lammonby ran from third slip to take a simple catch, the Somerset heart beating a sigh of relief. Essex 67 for 4. Browne 23. Lead 95. By lunch though, although Pretorius and Gregory, and then Jake Ball and Gregory, applied a tourniquet to the scoring rate and continued to beat the bat, Essex had edged forward again. Twenty-eight runs, but crucially no wicket, came in 11 tortuous overs with only two boundaries, one through extra cover and a straight drive, both from Matthew Critchley. Lovely strokes which again scythed at Somerset hopes.

At lunch, Essex were 95 for 4, Cox 15 from 62 balls and Critchley 16 from 27. The Essex lead was 123 with still six wickets standing. In a low-scoring game on a pitch providing frequent and persistent aid to the bowlers it was a lead which threatened to become decisive. My usual lunchtime anticlockwise circumnavigation involved encounters with a number of worried faces. “We might be in trouble here,” one comment which summed up the rest. The difference between a position of parity and the small but clear advantage Essex had fashioned was put down to the, admittedly small, number of loose balls bowled by the Somerset bowlers compared to their virtual absence from Cook and Porter. The only doubt expressed about the Essex bowling tactics was that three quarters of Essex’s overs had been bowled by Cook and Porter and they must tire at some point.

My circumnavigation being more of an anxious dawdle than a walk, I spent the first forty minutes or so of the afternoon session slowly making my way from the gap between the Lord Ian Botham and James Hildreth Stands to the covers store. I watched for a while from the gap between the Somerset Stand and Gimblett’s Hill. With most of the Somerset Stand closed to spectators, I had the nearest to a side-on view that could be had on that side of the ground. Josh Davey was powering in from the River End rather than ghosting along as he sometimes does, perhaps when nursing an injury. Critchley pushed belatedly at one ball. The resulting edge was falling short of first slip when James Rew took off grasshopper-like and scooped it up. A bowler and a keeper at the top of their game. Essex 106 for 5. Critchley 21. Lead 134. Somerset clinging on.

By the time I reached the covers store the Essex lead had inched to 146, each side meeting pressure with pressure. Those additional 12 runs had taken nearly seven overs of nerve-grinding cricket as Essex moved slowly towards that feared 200. Still they played and missed as Pretorius bowled a particularly miserly spell. They got no further before Cox, having taken an hour and three quarters over 27, defended tentatively against a ball from Overton and edged it straight to Lammonby at second slip. Essex 118 for 6. Lead 146. Somerset clawing their way back.

With me back in my seat at the top of the Trescothick Pavilion, and Essex on 128 for 6, Overton was still bowling, and bowling like a man possessed. His old energies were on full show after the more measured bowling of his initial return from his winter surgery. There was a huge appeal for caught behind off Harry Duke’s bat, and a thunderbolt past the edge of Noah Thain’s bat. “How many times do we have to beat the bat?” one exasperated Somerset supporter asked, shaking his head. As so often when luck seems to be against the bowler, Thain drove Overton square off the back foot to the Somerset Stand for four. When Gregory replaced Overton, his first ball, to Thain, was driven through the covers for four more. “Can’t bowl a half volley now,” the worried comment. Essex 137 for 6, a lead of 165 as now Essex applied the pressure and thoughts of Somerset’s eventual target being out of reach re-emerged. Perhaps the same thought had occurred to Gregory for, half volley retrieved from the boundary, he immediately found the range and Thain retreated into Essex’s pre- and post-lunch shell, the last ball of the over fizzing past the edge of his bat.

Now, Ball replaced Pretorius and bowled perhaps his best spell since his arrival at Somerset. His third ball was on the line of middle stump and seemed to go straight through Harry Duke. The stumps remained intact, but Rew threw the ball up in triumph. The cheer which erupted from the 1,500 or so Somerset supporters was thunderous. Hope. “We needed that,” a demonstrably relieved voice in front of me said. “We did,” the reply, “And we need two more quickly.” One of those nearly came when, two balls later, Simon Harmer edged Ball to slip but the ball popped out of Umeed’s hands and fell to earth. “Can’t be missing those,” said the message from the online watcher.

But Somerset were now playing like a team that would not be denied, and the tension and the anticipation could be cut with the proverbial knife. Fifteen hundred people, less the few anxious Essex supporters, were now willing Somerset on. Every time a bowler ran in, the silence was absolute. For two overs not a run came as Gregory and Ball pinned Essex back. Thain almost played on trying to keep Gregory out and played and missed at the next ball. Harmer jerked to get on top of a ball from Ball which lifted. “That was a good ’un,” said the voice in front of me. In Ball’s next over there were still no runs for Essex as their lead of 165 stood frozen on the scoreboard. Then Thain was beaten yet again before playing across the line and being palpably leg before wicket to Gregory. There was a mountainous certainty in the cheer which followed the raising of the umpire’s finger. Thain seemed in little doubt either. “He knew it. He walked,” said the man in front of me. “There is tension in every ball,” said his friend. Snater replaced Thain and left his first ball to startled gasps. “That nearly bowled him,” someone commented. “Good over Mr Gregory,” said the man in front of me.” “His bowling changes are taking wickets too,” replied his friend.

When Harmer was leg before wicket in Ball’s next over the cheer was ear-splitting and still no runs had come since the fall of the seventh wicket, the score frozen on the scoreboard for so long it might have been carved there in granite. In the end, a single from Snater finally disturbed the scoreboard, but that only brought Porter on strike in time for him to edge Gregory low to Rew’s right, halfway towards a widish first slip. Rew launched himself at the ball and scooped up Essex’s final wicket with another astonishing low catch. “What a catch!” said the incredulous man in front of me. Essex 138 all out. They had lost their last six wickets for 33 runs, their last four for one, restricting Somerset’s target to 167. It was less than anyone had thought possible at lunch but still challenging enough. It would be the highest score of the match with the bowlers and the conditions still dominant. The ground though was buzzing like a hornets’ nest poked with a stick.

After lunch, Matt Renshaw and Sean Dickson emerged from the Caddick Pavilion and immediately struck hard at Essex before they could recover from their pummelling at the hands of the Somerset bowlers. They drove Essex back at four runs an over. It was like watching a new dawn after Essex’s two runs an over crawl. It was not all Somerset. Cook and Porter still regularly beat the bat and found the occasional thick edge. In Porter’s first over, Renshaw left a ball so close to the stumps it provoked the comment, “Tight leave, that one, Mr Renshaw.” The enduring picture of the opening partnership though was not of tight leaves and near misses but of crisply driven balls and a rising Somerset score. An on drive off Cook from Renshaw to the Brian Rose Gates boundary and another for three towards the Hildreth Stand from Dickson off Porter brought cheers. A straight drive to the Lord Ian Botham Stand boundary from Renshaw was stunning, and a quick single to Dickson off Cook brought applause and shouts of, “Well run!”

Between the applause and cheers, the crowd was quiet, the atmosphere tense. “Shot!” said someone amidst more cheers as Renshaw drove to Gimblett’s Hill while Dickson took two twos from successive balls off Cook, one carefully driven off the back foot through the covers. As tea approached, Snater replaced Porter, and Renshaw drove hard at him, missing the ball, it seemed, by a hairsbreadth. “He hasn’t got to do that,” cautioned the man in front of me. But that is how it was. The ball had beaten the bat the whole match long and had, in the end, driven the Essex second innings into the ground. Somerset were taking a different approach, and perhaps aided by Cook and Porter having been bowled endlessly in Somerset’s first innings, were succeeding. Such quick progress on this pitch was not to be made without risk, but perhaps the greater risk lay in not taking the risk. Somerset reached tea on 45 for 0 from 11 overs, more than Essex had scored in their final 21 overs, and the target had shrunk to 126.

Essex began after tea with Cook and Snater while Dickson immediately made clear Somerset’s intention of continuing their pre-interval assault. In Snater’s first over, bowled from the River End, Dickson drove him to the off for four, hoisted him over long on to The Hildreth Stand for six and drove him again towards the Hildreth Stand for three, a single from Renshaw taking the total for the over to 14 and Somerset to 61 for 0, 106 runs from their target. That over not only relaunched the Somerset assault but re-ignited the crowd, more cheers and applause ringing out. Snater suffered again in his next over, Renshaw driving off the back foot through the covers and leaning into an on drive to the Caddick Pavilion taking Somerset to 74 for 0 and the runs required to 93. Even so, through a growing sense of anticipation, tension still hung in the air. There was chatter between balls, but it was hushed, anxious chatter, for nothing was certain on this pitch. Essex were still playing with determination and Cook and Porter would only need a door pushed slightly ajar to charge through it.

And then, in this match, on this pitch, the inevitable. Cook and Porter both struck. In successive balls, Cook appealed for leg before wicket against Renshaw and then beat him. Suddenly, Renshaw was looking uncertain and off the next ball the leg before wicket appeal was successful. Somerset 75 for 1. Renshaw 35 and applauded all the way back to the Pavilion. Runs required 92. Undeterred, Dickson continued to attack. In three balls he struck Porter for two twos and, walking down the wicket, cut him to the Caddick Pavilion for four. It was a scintillating response to Renshaw’s wicket, but, in this match, risk accompanied virtually very stroke. Attempting to drive the next ball straight, Dickson was caught behind. Somerset 83 for 2. Dickson 42 with the applause also following him off the field. Runs required 84. Somerset halfway.

Now, Somerset’s immediate future lay in the hands of Lammonby and Umeed. Lammonby’s was a curious innings in the context of what had gone before. He played out three successive maidens before leaving a ball from Snater, bowling with the keeper standing up, and was palpably leg before wicket. “Dreadful,” said the man in front of me and Somerset were 99 for 3. Lammonby 0. And still 68 needed to win. Looking at the scorecard some years hence that may seem a straightforward task. At the height of a match consisting of perpetual mayhem, it looked anything but.

Umeed had continued to push Somerset forward while Lammonby’s innings stagnated. Within the space of three balls, he had struck Cook straight back over his head to the Trescothick Pavilion for four, and then leaned into a straight drive along the ground for four more that had classical cricket watchers salivating. As the cheers grew louder, driving was the order of the day as the Essex bowlers stretched their length in search of movement. Next, Umeed drove Porter through the off side to the Colin Atkinson Pavilion and, when Porter tried a shorter ball, pulled him through straight midwicket to the Garner Gates. Umeed’s assault was unrelenting and Snater was driven off the back foot through the covers to the Somerset Stand to yet more cheers. Somerset getting closer.

Essex though had not won two recent County Championships for nothing and there was no let-up in effort or attack on their part. Simon Harmer was tried for a couple of overs without effect, perhaps to give Cook some respite, but in this match, a batter’s term was limited. Umeed was first beaten by Snater, then played a defensive stroke and the ball looped to Harmer at slip. Somerset 120 for 4. Umeed 34. Runs required 47. Well within range a detached observer may have thought, but it didn’t feel like that to the anything but detached Somerset supporter. Essex had lost their last six wickets for 32 and Somerset could do the same.

Somerset promoted Pretorius, his attacking batting already familiar to Somerset supporters. The intent was clear. It didn’t work. He was caught in the covers off a top edge by Cox off Cook for two from 14 balls. Somerset 135 for 5. Runs required 32. Essex had lost their last five wickets for 20. The edge of the seat was taking ever more pressure. Every run, however scored, was being applauded and cheered. Tom Banton took his time to establish himself, scoring in singles. Then he began to find the boundary, driving Porter, once straight and once through the covers. Even when not finding the boundary he attacked the ball, it coming hard into the hands of the inner ring fielders. He took Somerset past 150 and to within 15 of their target with another cover drive, this time off Snater, but then lost an out of touch James Rew, bowled by Snater for six despite having got in line. The ball barely noticeably removed the off bail as Snater sank to one knee imploring the umpire to give Rew out caught behind, Somerset, 152 for 6, still those 15 runs short of their target.

Essex had lost their last four wickets for one run. But surely, surely, Somerset must do it now. And yet, still anxiety clawed, the ingrained doubts of the lifelong supporter and the endlessly tumbling wickets of this game gnawing away at the mind. Gregory, said to be the epitome of calmness in the teeth of the tensest of situations was now at the wicket. Whether his mind harbours doubt in such situations I know not, but with the game approaching a decisive conclusion, one way or the other, he struck two emphatic boundaries in an over off Snater, the first off the back foot straight and the second lofted over mid-on, both to tumultuous cheers. Those two boundaries took Somerset to within five runs of victory. The head said victory was inevitable, but the heart was gripped by the tension that had held the ground in its thrall all day and it could not be shaken off so easily. A run later, as if giving the tension credence, Banton tried to keep Snater out and edged to Critchley at third slip, Essex having no option but to attack. Critchley knocked the ball up but took it at the second attempt. Somerset 163 for 7. Banton 29. Still four needed.

“This match won’t lie down,” said one taut face out of the stunned silence. Everyone heard and no one relaxed. Now Overton was striding to the wicket and cheers broke out around the ground. A mishit drive for one brought applause and two from a lofted drive over straight midwicket from Gregory brought cheers but Somerset were still one short. A deafening silence. Surely, surely. And with that, Overton, endlessly confident, made no mistake. He drove Porter through midwicket to the Somerset Stand and the cheer which accompanied the ball all the way blotted out all other sound and blew the tension away. Somerset were home, their supporters were on their feet cheering and applauding, and one of the more astonishing Somerset matches in recent years, a match of wills as much as skills, was over.

Result. Essex 156 (T. Westley 43, M. Pretorius 4-36) and 138 (J.H. Davey 3-20, L. Gregory 3-23). Somerset 128 (J.A. Porter 5-37, S.J. Cook 5-38) and 170 for 7 (S.R. Dickson 42, S. Snater 4-55). Somerset won by 3 wickets. Somerset 19 points. Essex 3 points.