Essex survive as Browne provides backbone

A match in which the cricketers had frequently triumphed over the conditions ended early in mocking Mancunian sunshine. Bowled out for 203 in their first innings, Essex's batsmen exhibited rather more backbone when asked to follow-on, although as Paul Horton pointed out in characteristically shrewd fashion, James Foster's men were essentially being asked to bat out time on what was a second-day wicket.

For while this game will be remembered for Steven Croft's hundred and should be remembered for Toby Lester's successful debut, it may also be recalled, perhaps with a slight shudder, for the 138.2 overs that were lost to the weather on the first three days.

However, the showers should not detract from Nick Browne's achievement in making 105 and 50 against Lancashire's skilful bowling attack. Had it not been for Browne's admirable obduracy and well-honed technique, Essex would have been dismissed for rather fewer than the mediocre 203 they managed in the first innings; had he not then made a half-century in 97 minutes second time around, Croft's bowlers may have been given the oxygen of early success with no one knowing to what long-shadowed dramas that might have led.

Browne was fortunate in that he found at least one other batsmen prepared to tough it out with him in Essex's first innings, although there was little surprise that his companion in the Old Trafford trenches was that cold-eyed battler James Foster. The pair had added 79 in 29 overs when Foster was pinned on the crease by James Faulkner for a deceptively modest 14 half an hour after the start of Thursday's play. Had the Essex captain been caught at slip by Croft off Faulkner for only 5 on Wednesday, Essex's decline might have been yet more rapid.

Even as it was, Faulkner bowled Greg Smith for 3, thus completing his personal five-wicket haul, before Lester had Graham Napier caught behind by Davies for 23. That was Lester's third and last wicket at the end of a week he had expected to be spending with Lancashire's second team at Headingley.

And the cynics who maintain that there is no romance in this game should have seen the left-arm bowler's wide-eyed wonderment after the match was over as he talked about the moment on Monday morning when he was told by Ashley Giles that he was in Lancashire's XI to play Essex. Even his team-mates were touched by his delight when he uprooted Jaik Mickleburgh's middle stump on Wednesday afternoon. "I'd be happy to bowl all day at Old Trafford" he said, when asked how difficult he had found the windy conditions.

However, neither Lester nor the offspinner, Arron Lilley, could precipitate the sort of collapse that Lancashire needed in Essex's second innings. Lilley removed Mickleburgh, caught at short leg by Croft for 37, and Browne, snared one-handed by Ashwell Prince at short cover off the leading edge for 50, in successive overs, but that was the summit of Lancashire's achievement on this last day.

The crowd whiled away the rest of the afternoon enjoying the warm sunshine on their backs as Lilley tried to make further breakthroughs under the gaze of the watching national selector James Whitaker. The spinner managed just one, when Ravi Bopara was neatly caught at short leg by Brown for 22. Matters were then left in the hands of Essex's fourth-wicket pair, Liam Dawson and Jesse Ryder, who dealt capably with Croft's attack during the final 18 overs of the game. Ryder's self-denial was exemplified by his taking 30 balls to score his first run, which may be something of a personal worst. By then, though, nobody minded very much.