Hameed's timely loitering stalls Essex charge and alerts selectors

Haseeb Hameed on a Wednesday morning in September.

Block, block, leave alone, block, block, block.

Each shot or non-shot is played again to an imaginary ball and most are punctuated by a short walk towards square-leg, the bat on the young man's shoulder. The cricketer as contemplative ploughboy.

Block, leave alone, leave alone, block, block, block.

The rhythm of Hameed's batting when he is fashioning an innings would soothe the troubled soul. To describe it as blocking does not begin to suggest the precision of the stroke, its beautiful stillness. There are false shots, of course, and there were a good few of them against the fine Essex seamers on the first morning of this match. But there also runs, albeit that they can come dropping slow when Hameed is settling in, a process that can take two hours or so.

By the end of this first day at Emirates Old Trafford, Hameed had made 85 not out against a seam-dominated attack which clearly relished the chance to bowl in cloudy conditions and on a wicket which had been under cover for two days.

The good citizens of Wormingford and Tollesbury may object but Hameed's batting can transcend the context in which it is played. Perhaps this was true for some spectators against Essex but the context remains important and Varun Chopra's bowlers could be pleased with the eight wickets they took against the only team with a realistic chance of depriving them of the title. Hameed won significant battles on the first day of this game but it is Essex who will probably prevail in the beautiful war and who made significant progress towards winning their first title for a quarter of a century.

This is set to be a ramshackle game. After losing the first day to heavy rain, the second was delayed for forty minutes by drizzle and further showers are forecast. Early on there was a procession of covers and rope-dragging carts and dark-suited groundstaff, reconciled to the necessity of their work and also its possible fruitlessness. This, too, is cricket in England.

The morning belonged to the Essex bowlers and Hameed did well to be undefeated on 5 when the players came in. Two wickets for Jamie Porter and a maiden success for Sam Cook - great joy in Great Baddow - on his championship debut justified the visitors' easy decision to bowl first on a cloudy, rain-threatened morning. Alex Davies drove loosely at Porter's third ball of the morning and second slip Simon Harmer made a rapid chance look easy; Liam Livingstone lost his off stump to a ball which came back off the seam from Cook ; and Dane Vilas was leg before to Porter when he went on the walk and played across the line, a combination of fatal errors.

The afternoon offered joy to Varun Chopra's bowlers, too: first, when Chanderpaul gloved a leg-side catch when attempting to pull a ball from Paul Walter which was too close to him and then when Jos Buttler sliced a drive off Porter to Dan Lawrence in the gully. Ryan McLaren batted with eminent good sense for an hour to halt the tumble of wickets but was then lured by Harmer into attempting a booming off drive and only succeeded in edging the ball into his wicket.

For much of the first half of this day Hameed was playing himself in and was clearly content to survive. Having scored 10 runs off his first 54 balls, he then added another single off the next 54 before squirting a three through gully. That seemed to free him a little and he hit three boundaries over as many overs from the Statham End, driving Walter twice and clipping Porter through midwicket.

Jordan Clark helped Hameed add 53 for the seventh wicket before he edged Cook to Lawrence in the gully via Foster behind the stumps. But it was Stephen Parry who gave the opener most assistance and who had the best view of the six over long-on off Harmer with which he had celebrated his fifty and the array of boundaries he played in the evening session against an old ball and a slightly tiring attack. Hameed had struck ten fours when Parry, having batted very well for 35, was caught by Foster off Porter's first delivery with the new ball. By close of play Hameed had batted 315 minutes and faced 233 balls.

More importantly for his career, he had reacquainted himself with the smooth technique Lancashire supporters admired only twelve months ago, He can bat better than he did on the second day of this game but he may also have played one of the most important innings of his professional life. The England selectors will have noticed his 85 not out and will be asking for reports on it. The one very early chance he offered to Lawrence when he had made 1 will be set aside when placed against his growing fluency. If he makes 15 more runs, he will be talked about with even greater intensity during the Lord's Test.

Block, block, four.