A thriller in Liverpool

What a great feeling it is to be back playing after so many net sessions.

During the World Twenty20 I think I netted every day bar two; one because my back was tight and the other was a day off. Netting is fine when you get to go out and put it into play. Netting is very hard work when you want to play, but can’t get selected. It felt like that after my six balls against Scotland.

I got to play yesterday for Leicestershire over in Liverpool against Lancashire. I had one net with the Leicester lads on Friday; I got in and bowled hard for around 40 minutes. I felt good and knew I didn’t need much more before playing yesterday. I also wanted to spend some time away from cricket, so I cleared it with our coach, Tim Boon, so that I could miss Saturday’s net session and have the weekend off. Ended up being a very good weekend away with the wife and got to see some amazing animals at the West Midland Safari Park, well worth a visit (loved the Cheetahs!).

I made sure I got to the ground early so that I could do a bit of extra bowling before we started warm-ups proper. Just on the side of the block I got into some work, testing out the body, working on part of my load up and getting into the grove. I warmed up really well here and got to full pace pretty quickly, thanks also to a lovely day in Liverpool.

It had been rumoured last week that it was going to be a sell-out – it was for real. At a really lovely ground, Aigburth, Liverpool, with loads of temporary seating set up it wasn’t long till I couldn’t see a spare seat. Well, that’s a bit of a fib as the queues to the beer tent were massive. It was going to be a fun afternoon with an excited and expectant crowd.

We won the toss and batted first. No real reason, it just looked a good deck and we wanted to bat first. We got off to a great start, 66 for the first wicket; some real good hitting from Jimmy Allenby set us on our way to a possible score of around 160. His form in this competition has been brilliant. We didn’t get to 160 though, after being 96-1 in the 12th we didn’t kick on to what would have been, on the deck, a very competitive score. Lancashire bowled well in the second half of their bowling effort and pulled us back to just 146; the unfortunate thing though, for them, was that it showed us how to bowl on the surface. It was a tough deck to score rapidly on if you bowled in a very containing manner, as opposed to bowling good lengths in the theory that good bowling and wickets will stop the runs. This was one thing I had learnt from Kyle Mills during the World Twenty20; stopping them scoring the big runs will often bring the wickets anyway.

I bowled the third over and it didn’t start quite as I hoped; second ball sailed clean over the midwicket boundary. I went straight into damage control for the over - get the guy hitting the runs off strike, Croft in this case - and bowl to the other guy and try to limit the blow to as few more runs as possible. It worked and I also picked up a wicket with a ball I held cross-seam that just bounced a little more than it would have normally, an easy catch to midwicket. I wouldn’t say I felt amazing, but it felt good to be back out playing and doing the things I had been practicing so much.

My next over was better, apart from my first ball. It didn’t have enough on it in terms of energy and it went back past me at a rate of knots off Flintoff’s bat. I stuck a leg, and kind of a hand out and unfortunately, or fortunately for me, I didn’t get anything on it. The next ball, another cross-seamer, and with a bit more behind it, picked up our second wicket and an important one for us if we were to defend this total.

New batter and I went to length first ball, left alone, a slower ball same length next, defended to the off side. My third ball was an effort ball which I was aiming for length hoping to squeeze out another dot. This one kicked really nicely off a length and grabbed an edge through to Niko behind the stumps. A ball that I wish would come out more often, one of those where you’re just happy that you bowled it and not having to face it.

I bowled one more over in the spell, my third and last ball - a short one that I was planning for a dot was pulled out to square leg and taken by White. That was the set Croft gone - 58 for 4 and we were sitting in a good position but it wasn’t over yet.

Laxman and Chilton, the fifth-wicket partnership, dragged Lancashire back into the match and if they had won, this fight would have been where the game changed. Our catching had been great but our ground fielding hadn’t, and in this stand we let at least three balls get to the fence that should have been stopped.

Our catching stayed fantastic, Dips taking a great catch to remove VVS and breaking that partnership.

We bowled well through the middle with Claude and White going for just five runs each off their fourth and third overs respectively, and picking up two and one a piece.

This left 32 off three and I had one of those overs to bowl. Nine off the 18th and I came on with 23 from two with three wickets in hand. My over went for six and I picked up my fifth wicket, my best haul in a Twenty20 game, one pretty happy boy!

Seventeen off the last and a six off the first ball is not what you want. AJ had his first wicket next ball though, with White’s third catch, at long-on. Anything could still happen here, it only takes one big shot, one edge, to turn things on its head. A dot ball then a two which could have been a run out had my throw hit from long on. Nine off two and as long as this one doesn’t go to the fence we should be fine. It comes to me at long-on and I’m in two minds; run in hard for the catch and finish the match while taking the risk of making a mess and conceding more runs, or take it on the bounce and keep them to one, knowing they can’t score eight off one ball. I took the catch, comfortably in the end and finished it. A very good win for us and it sets up a good week of Twenty20 cricket when we play tomorrow at Trent Bridge.

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