First-Class Counties Second Eleven Annual 2019

7 REVIEW OF THE SEASON Durham captured the major honours by becoming Second XI Champions for the third time in their history and the second time in the last three years. This must be encouraging for the Club after their well-documented problems in 2018 to know that a batch of talented players are coming through who can hopefully form the crux of the senior eleven for the foreseeable future. Essex were defeated in the play-off, with Durham winning the title by virtue of a first-innings lead. Durham were set a target of 248 and finished on 144/9, with the last pair keeping Essex at bay for seven overs. The One-Day Trophy saw Middlesex atone for their defeat by Yorkshire in 2017 as they again reached the final and defeated Somerset by just one wicket at Radlett. Somerset have now appeared in five Trophy finals and have lost them all. They have also been defeated on the two occasions they have reached the final at Arundel of the T20 competition. Essex had some consolation for missing out on the major honour by triumphing in the T20 Finals Day at Arundel. The day itself was dreadfully hit by the weather with all three matches being severely reduced. Each semi-final (Durham v Essex and Gloucestershire v Lancashire) was reduced to the bare minimum of five overs per side. The final fared slightly better, as each side had nine overs. In the earlier rounds of the T20 competition, Essex set a new competition record at Chelmsford when they hit the Glamorgan bowling for 276, losing just four wickets in the process. Paul Walter led the way with 103. Over the whole season, 26 scores of 200 or better were recorded in the competition. Thirty-one century partnerships were also established. In the Second Eleven Championship, the MCC Young Cricketers registered their highest-ever total of 673/9 dec against Derbyshire at High Wycombe. This was the eighth-highest total in the 60-year history of the competition. Rishi Patel of Essex totaled 988 runs at an average of 76.00 with five centuries. This is the closest any player has got to the magic thousand for many years. The highest individual score was 278* by Dominic Sibley for Warwickshire against Derbyshire at the Dennis Violet Avenue ground in Stoke-on-Trent – a new venue for 2018. The leading wicket-taker was Aron Nijjar for Essex who took 39 wickets. His colleague Michael-Kyle Pepper led the way with 28 dismissals behind the stumps in Championship games. Three batsmen, Daniel Bell-Drummond (Kent), Rob White (Middlesex) and Alex Thomson (Warwickshire) each scored two centuries in a match and two batsmen, Haseeb Hameed (Lancashire) and Ricardo Vasconcelos (Northamptonshire) carried their bats with scores of 183* and 81* respectively. The best bowling analysis in an innings was the 8/21 recorded by Kazi Szymanski for Glamorgan against Sussex at the Spytty Park ground in Newport. Yorkshire’s Ben Coad had the best match figures of 11/60 (8/33 and 3/27) at York CC against the MCC Young Cricketers.