What's a points deduction to a very good team like Somerset? How many and why? The team that need a points deduction is Middlesex for their awful and unimaginative cricket!
Seriously, if I was Tom Abell I’d declare overnight. Our only chance is if Essex are set a gettable target and they start chasing it. Going in for an hour tomorrow for another 50 runs achieves nothing except ensuring a draw. 191 might be enough on a 5th day pitch, who knows?
Yep. The equation of 237 from 80 overs is fairly balanced enough to still involve a run chase taking place even if Essex do drop anchor somewhat. 237 from 90 overs would have been even better (very difficult to get a draw from that equation), but 237 from 80 overs is still alright.
If Lawrence wants to stake his claim for a test spot (which is much harder than it was four months ago, due to Crawley's runs), this is the sort of situation he needs to make a score in.
Well done to both teams for a briliant match thus far. Very brave of Somerset setting Essex a gettable total. They have invited Essex not to shut up shop, and I am sure Essex would want to win the trophy playing the cricket which has won them the County Champiohsip twice in three years and the T20. It would be great, however, if Jack Leach proved ot be the match winner for Somerset.
Much as I want Jack Leach to do well, it would be a travesty if he won this match for us. Somerset have taken just one red ball wicket with spin this season, and that wasn’t either of our England bubble spinners Leach and Bess, but Roelof van der Merwe. It’s been our pace attack which has got us to Lords, and of all of them, Craig Overton probably just edges Lewis Gregory as the one most deserving of a few wickets in this last innings of the season.
That is why Somerset have given Essex a gettable target rather than an impossilbe one. It is gettable and Somerset have invited Essex to get the runs rather than bat out a draw, which Essex may well do, but that is unlike Essex.
Essex going at 3 an over and need about 3 an over to win, I wonder how many more wickets will make them drop anchor?
Myths are there to be exploded!!! However, it is not a myth to say that Lords is not a spinner's paradise these days. It is was Middlesex would have a decent spinner or two. And how many wickets has Harmer taken this match? Normally he gets at least five in a second innings.
I think both sides will be content with that session. No more, no less. Somerset get the key wickets of Cook and Lawrence, whilst still having over 100 runs to play with. Essex still have six wickets in hand.
I’d have taken the current situation at the start of the day. Infuriatingly, I have to go out now and I’m going to miss the rest of the game!
Two County Championship's, and one BWT Trophy, in the space of three years. Very impressive from Essex. After the respective spells of dominance by Sussex and then Durham in the mid 2000s onwards, there was a period where red ball cricket lacked one main team. But it certainly has that again now, in Essex.