County League Championship
Essex v Glamorgan
Day 1; Session 1
So here we are again. Scenic Chelmsford for another crack at winning a title on a Big Ant cricket game. I tried this with Bradman 17 and it was... alright...
Anyways, brass tacks. The pitch was grassy and hard and crumbly with some light cracks. A bat firster. We won the toss and we batted firstly and this is what we did...
A classic batting performance I'm sure we can all agree. I started the game on easy batting and TBH it was a bit too easy so at drinks (15 overs in) I changed the batting to medium and then went on from there. Nick Browne did his general sticking around thing while Varun Chopra played with elan and grace to get the first fifty of the season. It wasn't just Chops who batted well though as in the 130 run partnership we had for the opening wicket 58 of them came from extras as the AI decided to keep banging the ball in and poor Cooke, who has been 'keeping' for Glamorgan, has seen 28 byes added to his name. Add the 37 wides as well and it doesn't look very good with the ball sailing to the long stop boundary again and again and again. Still, it worked as a tactic because so distracted was I by the extras that five overs before lunch I played late at an outswinger and poor Chopra was caught behind. A decent 57 but he will not be top-scorer in this innings... Nick Browne followed him in stupid fashion an over later by trying to turn a short ball around the corner. Instead it hit cannoned into his shoulder and floated so far up in the air even Cooke couldn't miss it and his excellently compiled 17 off of a 111 balls was cut short. Shame, he had looked solid... Lawrence and Westley saw the team to lunch. Our session, I would argue.
De Lange was the pick of the bowlers keeping it nice and tight as did Carlson the spinner. Hogan was in a very giving mood with a lot of the extras coming from his bowling. Douthwaite didn't really show much and the Glamorgan bowlers have definitely not used this two paced pitch to their full advantage thus far.
Advantage Essex at lunch then. This pitch already has cracks on it and is showing signs of variable bounce so to give away that many runs first up is a bit criminal by Glammy. The outfield is fast so you do get value if you time it (or the ball goes over the keeper's head) but Essex will feel confident with the way things have gone. My aim is to get Lawrence and Westley going and building off this platform because the work isn't done yet. A more disciplined session with the ball could very well reap rewards for the Welsh side although Extras will be expecting to raise his bat in the next session.
