Southport's soft focus belies Hampshire's hard-fought challenge

It is just gone half-past twelve at Trafalgar Road and Jack Blatherwick is bowling the 62nd over of Hampshire's second innings to Fletcha Middleton. It is a productive if fortuitous few minutes for the opener, who inside-edges one boundary to fine leg and misdrives another through midwicket. Otherwise, there are two backward defensive strokes, a bouncer that he ducks under and a leave-alone. Middleton is now 76 not out, having reached his third half-century in only his tenth Championship innings. This is his first season on the county circuit, although he knows a bit about it because his father, Tony, was both player and coach at the Rose Bowl. Hampshire are 176 for 2, still 56 runs in arrears. But what else is happening?

Well, there is a lot of gentle enjoyment at Southport this sun-filled morning. Last night's rain has left the burned outfield a richer brown and a good crowd is watching Hampshire attempt to avoid defeat and maybe set Lancashire a foxy target in the fourth innings. For many thousands of spectators on the ground or logging onto the live stream, this is the cricket they enjoy most. Gulls in the sky and in my blue eyes.

Need there be anything else?

Yes, of course. In the immediate context, Middleton will score only another single before being bowled by one that keeps slightly low from George Balderson. The same bowler has already snared Nick Gubbins leg before wicket for 62 and he will take a third wicket in 23 deliveries when Ben Brown is caught behind for a three-ball nought.

At lunch Hampshire are 210 for 4 and the prospects of a three-day finish increase twenty minutes after the resumption when Liam Dawson is caught behind by Phil Salt off George Bell for 26. Bell normally keeps wicket for Lancashire and social media is seething with rage that he is bowling before Tom Hartley and that Matt Parkinson isn't playing at all. Records suggest Bell has previously taken six wickets in any organised cricket but now Neil Mallender gives him a seventh when he decides that Dawson has nicked the ball to Salt.

The batsman is plainly gobsmacked - for the second time in two days, if you read any second-day reports - and he leaves the field gesticulating to nobody at all. His captain, James Vince, stands aghast. Bell is a little boy in a toyshop. Life gets no kinder to the visitors when Felix Organ is leg before to Will Williams and Keith Barker nicks Tom Bailey to Daryl Mitchell at slip. And it has been clear for some time that Hampshire's hopes of taking this game into a fourth day - or even winning it - rest on Vince, whose straight drives and dreamy pulls are already decorating the afternoon. But why is it that Middleton's batting and Bell's bowling remain on one's mind even as one of the game's most graceful stroke-makers glides towards a century?

To answer that question we might turn to Chris Firth's excellent programme for this match and the following words from John Arlott:

Arlott was speaking to Mike Brearley in 1986, when far more outgrounds were used but the passing of 37 years has not diminished the impact of his thoughts. The man who had seen Ray Lindwall in his pomp, Tom Graveney in all his splendour and Garry Sobers at his matchless best still preferred the county circuit because of its regional eccentricity, its rich humanity, its consonance between person and place.

That placing of the flower show above the state banquet would perhaps be understood by many of those who have watched their cricket at Southport or Chesterfield this week but we need to be careful here. Arlott mentions the players talking to each other as, indeed, they still do. The encouragement to Bailey and Williams as they sought to make early breakthroughs could be heard quite clearly by the crowd massed at the Harrod Drive End this crystal morning. But they now also talk about each other to a degree one suspects Arlott rarely knew. For example, consider this comment from one Lancashire cricketer to another after Blatherwick had altered his line of attack to Middleton on Monday evening: "I'm not sure why Jack went round, he [Middleton] was shitting himself from over."

Such observations are probably quite familiar to club cricketers; the recreational game has never been the gentle circus some think it. But hearing the words spoken to an opener who was playing his seventh first-class game reinforced the point that while Middleton is a fellow professional, he is also an opponent and an obstacle. If fatal damage to his career is the consequence of dismissing him, so be it. Watching cricket at Southport may be as appealing a suburban pastoral as any in England but remember these men are playing for their careers as well as their teams. In other words, do not forget that county game is bloody tough. The average age at which a professional cricketer retires is 26 and not everybody has stress fractures.

And now it is just gone five o'clock and Vince is progressing with understated grace to what is surely an inevitable century. Hartley has dropped him on 80, a tough chance high to the slip's left, but he is unbeaten on 87 when Daryl Mitchell bowls him a short ball - and he pulls it straight to Josh Bohannon at deep square leg. It has been a lovely innings and, as so often with Vince, a frustrating one.

Within 40 minutes Lancashire's openers are walking out to bat with their side needing 140 to win their first Championship game of the season. A quarter of an hour later both are back in the Trafalgar Road dug-out, Salt having been felicitously caught at slip by Vince off Mohammad Abbas, and Balderson taken by Brown off Barker. On the instant the air at Southport is thick with anxiety and it rings with the encouragement of Hampshire's cricketers.

But no more wickets fall. Bohannon and Vilas will start again in the morning with 98 runs needed and no one is calling the game yet. But as Lancashire edge their way towards their target, Fletcha Middleton will probably be standing in the slips, up straight in the sunshine and wondering what the game will show him in the coming months. The Ashes will be no richer than this.