County cricket: Somerset in front as thrilling title race builds to climax

1. Shush! Nobody say anything

Somerset hammered Leicestershire by 377 runs, a result that had an impact at both ends of the table.

Josh Thomas and Tom Lammonby did what title-chasing openers should do, piling up 181 runs at five an over to set the tone for the play to follow. After five Somerset bowlers notched wickets, Leicestershire were still 24 short of that stand when Thomas and Lammonby took guard again. They were not separated until the lead was 317, not enough to declare one down, but a huge advantage.

Cue Lewis Gregory (who made his Somerset debut in 2011), Craig Overton (2012) and Jack Leach (2012), who gobbled up nine second-innings wickets between them, securing 22 points and a day off.

Gregory, Overton and Leach – like every fan in their fervent support – know the last mile to the title is the hardest, something the players of Yorkshire and Surrey will know too in the remaining fixtures. What a climax awaits in that last match at Taunton.

2. The boy Manny can’t resist Stone on a roll

But Nottinghamshire will be trying to poop that party of all parties and retain the pennant.

As expected, they bashed Hampshire – though the basement county, fighting for their lives, did not go quietly at Trent Bridge.

After Joe Clarke scored another ton to extend his season-leading aggregate and Liam Patterson-White played the kind of knock that Kyle Verreynne, recalled by South Africa, has been making, with 92 at No 7, Haseeb Hameed knew the script.

Jake Lehmann didn’t, making 133 to give Hants a toehold, which grew into rather more than that when the teenage tearaway Manny Lumsden took five for 36 to leave his team needing 178 for a sensational win.

But the home side have an ex-teenage tearaway of their own – Olly Stone. He is not quite as quick as he was, because that was very quick indeed, but he is still a handful on any surface with his speed through the air. Nearly 33 now and 15 years on from a debut in which he didn’t bowl and was dismissed for a golden duck by Paul Collingwood, he and the very sharp Dillon Pennington blew Hampshire away, despite the kid Lumsden resisting for an hour and a half from No 11.

3. Could the Bears roar again?

Somerset and Nottinghamshire have been locked in a ding-dong battle at the top of the table for weeks, but Warwickshire are just a point off Notts and four from the summit after a second win on the bounce.

It was an embarrassment for Glamorgan in front of their own supporters, bowled out for 69 and 65, not much more than the 41 extras they conceded to the Bears. Chris Woakes only got one wicket, but that hardly mattered as his captain, Ed Barnard, recorded match figures of eight for 18, adding to his 51 with the bat.

The 30-year-old averages 36.2 with the bat this season and 26.2 with the ball, numbers that could worsen by five in each column and still look very good at Test level. Not that he’ll be thinking about flights to South Africa just now. He has two big matches to come this season: away at struggling Essex and at home to struggling Leicestershire. The Bears couldn’t roar again, as they did five years ago, could they?

Ed Barnard has been sensational for Warwickshire this season.

4. Kuldeep deepens Essex’s gloom

Essex are just eight points above the relegation zone and might need to beat a county other than the bottom two, who have supplied their four wins, if they are to survive. In their last match, a chance to leapfrog Yorkshire, the wheels fell off in spectacular style.

Essex would have been looking to dismiss the Yorkies, who were 233 for six, for well under 300, but George Hill, Dom Bess and Kuldeep Yadav made scores and, despite a five-fer for Matt Critchley, the recall of Simon Harmer by South Africa was felt sharply.

Only George Bell, the wicketkeeper on loan from Lancashire, put up much of a fight as the same trio who starred with the bat shot out the visitors for 171 and 113, Kuldeep claiming 10 wickets.

Essex’s last match of the season, against Glamorgan, is looming very large indeed.

5. Hot streak may impress Stephen Fleming

Middlesex put up a fight until deep into the second day but could not stop Durham from winning again to secure promotion.

The visitors to Chester-le-Street had the champions-elect in a bit of trouble, 162 for nine in the first innings, before Ben Raine (three centuries and 22 fifties) at No 10 and Callum Parkinson (two fifties) at 11 produced 90 runs for the last wicket.

Even after conceding a first-innings deficit of 49, Middlesex were in the game but, by the end of day two, Ben McKinney was already past 100 en route to 184. Durham set a target of 424, plenty enough for Brydon Carse to use as a platform for a nine-wicket match haul and for Parky to chip in with four scalps of his own.

Matt Parkinson, Callum’s twin, has 13 international wickets and, at 29, he has time to come again – but there’s an air of melancholy that clings to such talk, painfully so for some of us. Callum, albeit in the second division, has made vital runs and taken vital wickets with his slow left-arm spin and, though down the international pecking order, his averages this season – 31.7 and 26.7, the “right way round” – will not have gone unnoticed by England’s incoming Test coach.

Durham will play in Division One in 2027, but we’ve pretty much known that for weeks.

6. Saif Zaib finds a safe space in red-ball cricket

Northamptonshire needed to win to keep the pressure on Kent for the second promotion slot and they did, seeing off Worcestershire with a fine bowling display and runs from the man who was flavour of the month this time last year.

Saif Zaib has come back from white-ball slogging and recovered his form to hit three consecutive half-centuries against the red ball, topping off that streak with a vital ton last week. Make 110 and 24 in a match in which your opponents have mustered only 200 and 182 and you can be assured of delivering line one of the all-rounder’s job description: “Always affect the match.”

So too did his captain, Luke Procter, with five for 63 and two for 32, excellent figures but highlighting a problem for the county if they pip Kent to second in the division. He, and the equally evergreen Ben Sanderson, have been critical to the promotion push but, already in their late 30s, can they do it again, a year older, a level above? They might not get the chance, but they’ll be pushing as hard as possible in the run-in, exemplary pros that they are.