The Final Over of the Week in County Cricket – 27 June 2024

Business as usual for Surrey

But nothing at all usual about Louis Kimber’s knock for Leicestershire

Ball One: Dan the Man for the Champions

Mere mention of Dan Lawrence’s name invites scorn below the line, a certain resentment at the abundance of resources that smoothed the A12 from Chelmsford to Kennington for him and detailed (legitimate) concerns about the malign influence of financial disparities on sporting competition. But, as Gareth Southgate is finding out, holding advantages is not quite the same things as producing performances.

Surrey’s tenancy at the top of the table (and return to ferociously ruthless cricket) was powered by the ex-Essex man, Lawrence, who steered his team from 188-4 to 490 all out, then delivered 47-12-110-4, as Worcestershire’s challenge was crushed by an innings. He has played all eight Championship matches for 568 runs at 63 with a strike rate of 76 and has added 15 wickets at 36 from 157 overs. Nice money I’m sure, but that’s hard work too.

To get that return so swiftly on their investment, Rory Burns and the coaching staff had to settle him into a new environment, find a place for him in a highly competitive batting line-up and then convince him that his hitherto somewhat comical off breaks could be a real weapon. Don’t underestimate how difficult a trick that is to pull off, nor simply ascribe it to the Surrey swagger.     

Ball Two: Essex need Cook to stir the pot 

Essex could only draw at home to Durham, just about the best they could hope for after the visitors finished the first day with 445-4 on the board, Alex Lees having helped himself to a century and Ollie Robinson on his way to 198. Paul Walter and Dean Elgar were to reply with tons of their own, as the match petered out into a high scoring draw that leaves a bridgeable 12 points gap between first and second in Division One going into next week’s South London showdown.

Perhaps the player who had the greatest influence on the result wasn’t playing at all. Without Sam Cook’s leadership, the seam battery (Jamie Porter, Shane Snater, Eathan Bosch and Paul Walter) could muster just five wickets from their 72 overs at a cost of 285 runs. Cook may not be the battering ram that the Test selectors may favour, but his scalpel dissects batters’ techniques and provides a cutting edge that is even more evident in its absence than in its presence. 

Ball Three: No picnic for Bears on fourth day

Hampshire, whose pasting of the leaders last time out, had ignited hopes of a tighter race for the pennant, had an excellent chance of making it a hat-trick of wins at Edgbaston, but ran into an obdurate seventh wicket stand of 183 between Sam Hain and Michael Burgess, lurking at eight after Danny Briggs had continued a decent season with the bat as a nightwatchman.

James Vince will claim his team had the better of things across the four days, and in himself, Liam Dawson and Keith Barker, he had the match’s three outstanding players in his dressing room, but Warwickshire, winless all season, showed real fortitude to survive a fourth day that started with them 457 behind with their captain, Alex Davies, already out.

Hain’s near six hour vigil for 111 undefeated runs was the standout, but a long hot day up against it demands a team effort in order to come out alive. All 11 Bears can hold their heads high.    

Ball Four: Bohannon brings the funk at last

In the big relegation six-pointer (is there an equivalent in cricket?) Lancashire made the long trip to Canterbury full of hope and returned, a day early, full of points. 

If the wickets were very much down to the bowling unit’s efforts as a whole, Luke Wells again losing little in comparison to Nathan Lyon, the runs were largely thanks to his own 150 and 205 from Josh Bohannon. 

Not so long ago, Lancashire’s number three had a decent claim to be next cab off the rank if a spot opened up in the Test batting order. Bazball isn’t really his thing and he’s barely got it off the square in The Blast, so a double ton is a much-needed return to form in a somewhat callow Red Rose middle order. With a season average now pushing 40 and edging towards his famously high career stat of 46, a firing Bohannon is just what Lanky need to avoid the drop. If they do, they can look forward to 2025 in the top flight with a plethora of youngsters available all the better for a season’s hard graft.   

Ball Five: Hurricane Higgins blows through Derbyshire’s bowling

Middlesex concentrated on matters on the pitch – no easy matter these days in NW8 – and produced a fine performance on a rare Lord’s strip that was not, for once, a bowlers’ graveyard. 

It was a match for the all-rounders (and the almost all-rounders) as Ryan Higgins channelled his inner Darren Stevens with 163 and 67, also chipping in with four wickets for Middlesex, while his captain, Toby Roland-Jones, bagged a 50 and a fivefer as he turned back the clock. Derbyshire’s Luis Reece showed he retained plenty of his well-honed skills with a first innings century and three wickets, but it wasn’t enough.

Middlesex have a handy cushion of 25 points to third place Yorkshire in the quest for promotion, and will look for more output from the splendid Higgins and just enough from the bits and pieces men around him (there’s also Tom Helm, Josh De Caires, Ethan Bamber, Henry Brookes and Luke Hollman who might also lay claim to that backhanded compliment).  Make the runs and take the wickets will be the mantra – who gets them doesn’t matter.

In the meantime, Higgins might ask his captain whether he is really the best option to open the bowling in the second innings after already batting nearly eight hours in the match in addition to the 20 overs he got through in Derbyshire’s first dig.  

Ball Six: “Kimber!” And records fall

It was a well-timed declaration, Sussex taking the tenth Leicestershire wicket with 18 runs still in hand – a feather in the cap of new captain, John Simpson, who had made a typically undefeated 183 in the first innings.

Not that anyone will remember those details nor the result, even though it lifted Sussex to the top of Division Two. That’s because the unheralded Louis Kimber, until Wednesday the proud owner of 13 sixes in 30 first class matches and an average in the mid 20s, had what is known as a day out – and at the seaside to boot.

Legend will tell of balls being retrieved from the beach at Hove, but the plain facts are plenty enough for now. 175-7 to 445 all out via 243 from the visitors’ number eight, comprising 20 fours and a scarcely believable 21 sixes, one of many records annihilated in a three hours stay of sustained carnage. That it ended in heroic failure and handshakes from relieved opponents will only endear him more to county cricket fans, for whom such poignancy is catnip.

If a journalist is yet to pitch an “I know, because I was there” piece for Wisden 2025, do it soon, else I might try it myself, despite being 1000 miles or so North – after all, the fantasy could hardly be more outlandish than the facts.