Winter and Kent milestones

[brianh]

Good morning from the sunny Essex/London frontier and hope you've all wintered well.

During the winter Jesse Ryder passed 100 first-class wickets in his career and in the Kent match he reached 50 first-class wickets for Essex.

For those of you who like to keep up to date in these matters, and apart from those involved in England tours the following played in other first-class matches. Alstair Cook played in the MCC v Yorkshire match in UAE; Mark Pettini played for Mashonaland Eagles in Zimbabwe; Jesse Ryder played for Otago in New Zealand and Tom Westley played for the world famous Bloomfield Cricket & Athletic Club in Sri Lanka. Details of all these performances can be found on the cricketarchive website.

As you will all doubtless know, the match against Cardiff MCCU was not first-class which is a shame for those who had good performances in the match. I don't usually blow my own trumpet in these pages but something has to be done about the Universities. To my mind, all their matches or none should be first-class. The days of Oxford and Cambridge being able to hold their own with counties have long gone.

[Valentines Park]

Loughborough gave Kent a run for their money though.

Which probably says more about Kent.

[Perov]

Not sure if it was a milestone at Chelmsford but it was a first for me.
I have never before seen both Umpires wearing gloves in a first class match.

[Slogger]

They looked like snooker refs!

Great to have you back Brian!

[IlfordEagle]

Last week was the first time I'd seen Essex play a Uni side, welcome back Brian - great to read your stats again.

[terryb]

Brian, do you know why our game against Cardiff MCCC was not given first class satus? Their matches, earlier in the season, against Glamorgan and Gloucestershire were deemed to be first class.

[brianh]

I was caught out by this when the match started and I've appended a precis of what the ACS expert sent to me. The MCCU status was unchanged from last year, namely the first two matches for each MCCU would be first-class and the third not. This was the compromise when all six MCCUs were treated equally (Cardiff and Leeds/Bradford having previously not been first-class for all their games) because at that time the third game of three was quite often not played until May or June when counties were playing second teams. This year for the first time all three games were played at the start of the season in a block so it does look a bit more odd with the different status. Essex were not alone in treating the Cardiff match in a way where winning the match was not the primary objective, which along with the difference in standard between the teams are the main reasons why none of the MCCU matches really shouldn't be first-class. As far as I am concerned it seemed to be a good idea at the start of the extra teams but the standard dropped a lot and I can't see it improving. As an occasional visitor to Cambridge and an observer of the lists of Blues on the honours boards on the Pavilion walls over recent years makes poor reading. I know that Cambridge could never have four batsman of the capability of David Sheppard, John Dewes, Hubert Doggart and Peter May in the same team as they were in 1950. If any more information comes to light and is not reported generally I'll try to update you. I hope I haven't bored wou all to death with this epistle.

[terryb]

Brian, thanks for the explanation. During the match I had told several people on the Riverside Stand that we were watching a first class fixture. I apologize to them.