![]() Here was a master-craftsman at work, someone who had not played T20 cricket for nearly seven years, making the most of cloudy conditions to torment and then dismiss a batsman of the quality of Heino Kuhn. ![]() Bizarrely, perhaps, the first thing I did was watch James Anderson take 7 for 19 against Kent a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly I felt as though a world I know well and loved for good reason was being ripped away.Īt which point I decided that was quite enough of the self-pitying nonsense and tried to take a rational view of things. As I say, it was a grim week, particularly so for someone like me, who is looking forward to the Royal London (see last week’s column). I had a vision of lines of English cricketers queueing like Monty Python’s gasmen, waiting to see which urban outfit required their services. Given that there are eight sides in the new competition and there should be something like 300 players available this seemed rather an over-reaction. Scott Boswell, 20 years on: A life rebuilt from the ruin of the yips As we waited to see whether there would be play at Headingley news reached us – actually, I suspect it was more like gossip – that the Royal London Cup was to be cancelled, partly because of the risk of Covid-19 but also so that virus-free cricketers could be ready to join The Hundred should teams be weakened by the pandemic. Lancashire v Surrey at Blackpool in 2008 was a particular corker: four days in late August and no one got near to bowling a ball. I have, though, coped with very wet games before. Leech’s injury may have been the final prompt the officials needed to stop play but it was not the fundamental cause of their action. The careful reasoning behind the decision could have been communicated more clearly but the decision itself was perfectly right and it was noticeable that both teams’ coaches took the trouble to acknowledge the respect in which Gould and Llong are held. If there was a consolation in all this, it was provided by the batting of Dane Vilas’s top-order and by the good judgement of the umpires, Ian Gould and Nigel Llong, who, having seen that the pressure of the bowlers’ boots had brought water to the surface, braved the understandable anger of the Headingley crowd by keeping the players off the field despite the bright sunlight. Nine days ago I travelled to Leeds and watched Lancashire make 273 for 2 on the first day of the Roses Match, only for the second to be washed away by twelve hours’ rain, the third to be curtailed by Dom Leech’s nasty leg injury and the fourth to be lost completely because the umpires judged the ground at Headingley’s Emerald Stand End to be too wet. It has, in truth, been a rather dismal week or so.
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