TEAM NEWS
Essex: Paul Walter, Dean Elgar, Tom Westley (C), Charlie Allison, Matt Critchley, Wiaan Mulder, Michael Pepper (WK), Simon Harmer, Shane Snater, Sam Cook, Jamie Porter.
Leicestershire: Rishi Patel, Jake Weatherald, Sol Budinger, Ian Holland (C), Jonny Tattersall, Stephen Eskinazi, Ben Cox (WK), Ben Green, Ben Mike, Ajaz Patel, Josh Hull. (Jake Weatherald was replaced by Nick Kelly for the second innings due to injury).
MATCH DETAILS
Umpires: Nigel Llong & Neil Pratt
Match Referee: Wayne Noon
Toss: Essex won the toss and elected to bowl
Result: Essex win by seven wickets
DAY THREE REACTION
DAY THREE HIGHLIGHTS
DAY THREE REPORT
Shane Snater and Sam Cook shared eight wickets during a morning of utter mayhem at Chelmsford as Leicestershire were routed for 60 before Essex wrapped up what turned out to be a nervy seven-wicket win.
The Essex seamers were almost unplayable on a pitch enlivened by overnight rain and still tinged green, as struggling Leicestershire were dismissed inside 28 overs. The heart of the Leicestershire innings was ripped out with three middle-order wickets going down in 15 balls, turning 25-2 into 29-5, and four more in a concentrated 24-ball blitz that prefaced the end. Snater took four of them for 12 runs, Cook 4-19.
And all this after Leicestershire claimed a 40-run first-innings lead after taking the last two Essex wickets in the first 16 minutes of day three, though Ian Holland’s two wickets with the new-ball to finish with 4-54, gave a hint of what was to follow.
However, in a remarkable turnaround in the Rothesay County Championship, little more than two hours later Essex found themselves requiring just 101 runs to win with five sessions nominally in which to do it. They duly reached their target in 30 overs but not without alarms as they lost three quick wickets.
Leicestershire barely had time to celebrate their advantage before the carnage began. With the floodlights on, and the pitch with plenty of life in it, Rishi Patel played down the wrong line to Jamie Porter and existed lbw. Fellow opener Sol Budinger followed soon after, swinging at Cook to mid-off, the ball in the air for so long that Tom Westley could have done a handstand.
Next man in was Nick Kelly, the New Zealand lefthander confirmed overnight as the injury substitute for Jake Weatherald, who badly bruised his elbow on day one. Kelly had rocked up in Leicester with a Vitality Blast contract in his pocket, only to suddenly find himself unexpectedly called upon to don whites in Chelmsford.
A bewildered Kelly had still not got off the mark from 16 balls when he lost captain Holland, nibbling at one just outside off-stump to Cook. And he hadn’t scored from the four balls that followed before he got a thick edge to an inswinger from Snater and Simon Harmer dived full-length to his left to claim.
A third wicket in double-quick time went down when Cook knocked back Jonny Tatterall’s off-stump. At that stage Cook had 3-6 from seven overs.
And still the wickets tumbled. Stephen Eskinazi scratched around for 21 balls before he misjudged a delivery from Snater, who then accounted for Ben Green in his next over, also lbw to an indeterminate forward movement. That gave Snater figures of 3-5 in his sixth over.
Porter had been comparatively quiet, but he rejoined the party when Ben Mike tried to charge him, wafted, missed and ended up losing his leg stump. Ajaz Patel’s stay lasted just three balls before he played around one from Snater.
Lunch was delayed long enough for Cook to come back and end Ben Cox’s 41-ball solo rearguard action by removing off-stump.
The dark clouds had disappeared, the floodlights switched off, as Essex chase began in bright sunshine. There appeared little to disconcert them in the first 10 overs, but that quickly changed. Josh Hull had Dean Elgar lbw with his third ball. Next over Paul Walter’s faltering season continued when he played tentatively forward to Green and was also lbw before Tom Westley hoisted Hull to mid-on. Faint alarm bells were ringing at 27-3 before Matt Critchley and Charlie Allison put on a measured fourth-wicket stand of 77 to see them over the line.
Holland had polished off the Essex first innings at the start of the day when Harmer shuffled across to give himself room and exposed his leg stump, which was duly uprooted, and Snater lasted four balls before nicking behind. That left Wiaan Mulder, who had batted fluently in an 86-run ninth-wicket stand with fellow South African Harmer, 79 not out.
DAY TWO REACTION
DAY TWO HIGHLIGHTS
DAY TWO REPORT
Jamie Porter spared the embarrassment of some of Essex’s more senior batsmen with a maiden first-class half-century to prevent Leicestershire establishing a big lead in the Rothesay County Championship match at Chelmsford.
The 32-year-old seamer, whose batting CV is littered with noughts and noughts not out, batted with a hitherto unsuspected assurance on extended nightwatchman duty for just shy of three hours for 52 invaluable runs as Essex floundered on a green wicket that offered assistance to anyone prepared to put in the effort.
Porter, who shared an 81-run last-wicket stand with Simon Harmer last week against Hampshire, put on 96 in 25 overs for the fifth wicket with Charlie Allison after Essex capsized to 39-4 in reply to Leicestershire’s first-innings 333. Allison chipped in with 72 from 103 balls before Wiaan Muldcr’s unbeaten 70 under the floodlights, but too many Essex players were out to poor shots. Ben Mike was their chief tormentor with 3-74.
Essex had reduced Leicestershire’s lead to 52 on 281-8, with Muldcr and Harmer’s ninth-wicket partnership worth 74, when bad light just after five o’clock rendered it unsafe for the new-ball to be taken.
The big surprise of the day was that Essex’s first wicket of the morning was not that of their second nightwatchman but the experienced opener Dean Elgar, caught at mid-off driving loosely at Ben Green. Nor was it the second. Three overs later, in an inexplicable rush of blood unsuited to the situation, Paul Walter slashed wildly to first slip off Ian Holland.
Porter had come in the previous evening in an effort to protect the front-line batsmen after original nightwatchman Sam Cook had lasted just three balls. The Leicestershire bowlers tried to intimidate Porter with some short-pitched deliveries but to no avail, despite Josh Hull leaving him on his backside in avoiding one of them.
From 25-3, Tom Westley dug in for more than half-an-hour, facing 30 balls for two runs, before he was strangled down legside by Mike.
Porter was less inhibited and hit Green for a gloriously elegant off-drive past the bowler for one boundary and followed it with another carved over backward point’s head. He passed his previous highest score of 34 – recorded as a young whippersnapper against Glamorgan in Cardiff 11 summers ago – when he drove Hull crisply through the covers for his fifth boundary.
At the other end, Allison was quietly going about his business, accumulating runs in a steady, untroubled rhythm. He reached his fifty from 76 balls by thrashing Green through the covers for a sixth four. And it was not long before Porter was raising his bat on an unprecedented milestone after turning Mike into the covers from the 108th ball he faced.
It was only when Mike finally bowled one at the stumps that Porter’s defences were breached after 117 balls and he walked off, head held high, to a standing ovation.
Mike struck again in his next over, taking a return catch at midriff-height to remove Matt Critchley. Allison saw off Mike with three successive boundaries to three different parts of the ground. Unfortunately for him it brought back Hull, who found the outside of Allison’s bat with his third delivery.
Michael Pepper helped Mulder take Essex through the follow-on barrier before he got into a tangle against Ajaz Patel and was judged lbw.
Mulder, accelerated through the gears, pulling Mike for his fifth four to reach fifty and take Essex to a batting point that had looked beyond them at 143-6.
DAY ONE REACTION
DAY ONE HIGHLIGHTS
DAY ONE REPORT
A rollocking second-wicket stand between Sol Budinger and Jake Weatherald was followed by simpler fare as Leicestershire lost their initial impetus and gently subsided to 333 all out.
The left-handed pair went off at a rate of knots, sharing 19 fours and three sixes, in a partnership of 125 from 22 overs that questioned Tom Westley’s decision to give them first crack on another Chelmsford wicket with plenty of grass left on it. However, when both men departed either side of lunch, Weatherald for 61 from 77 balls, Budinger for 89 from 114, that earlier exuberance was not sustained and Essex grew into the game.
Instead, apart from Stephen Eskinazi’s bright and breezy fifty, no other Leicestershire batsman was able to dominate. And with the exception of a wayward opening over, Wiaan Mulder was the pick of those Essex bowlers. The South African all-rounder bowled with real menace and asked questions of the batsmen, particularly with deliveries that reared up outside off-stump, and fully deserved figures of 3-70.
Left with three overs to negotiate in the evening sunshine, Essex lost nightwatchman Sam Cook to the second delivery of the innings, nowhere near a delivery from Ian Holland. Nightwatchman No2, Jamie Porter, was then sent in, though Dean Elgar needed little protection as he took successive boundaries off the Leicestershire captain as Essex reached stumps at 10-1.
The loss of Rishi Patel to Cook’s seventh ball of the day – caught behind off a tentative forward-defensive push – united the two lefthanders who took the game to Essex in a whirlwind of power hitting. Weatherald was in such a rush that he brought up the fifty stand at a run a ball with five boundaries in eight balls, three of them in succession off Cook, who had earlier been flicked nonchalantly over square leg for six by Budinger.
Colchester-born Budinger added a second maximum over extra cover to the fourth ball from Simon Harmer to reach his half-century from 54 balls. Weatherald, meanwhile, treated Mulder’s first delivery with disdain, pulling it full-toss over the ropes at square leg. The next ball, the first of three no-balls in the over, marked the hundred partnership from 109 deliveries.
Weatherald’s fifty was comparatively more sedate than Budinger’s, reached with a sharp single to mid-off from his 61st ball. However, the ball after he was dropped by Cook from a straight skyer, he played on to Mulder via a painful blow to his right elbow, which he gave a rueful rub to as he walked off before being despatched for an X-ray. New Zealander Nick Kelly, due to play in the Vitality Blast, is a potential candidate to step in as injury replacement, if required.
Holland was never comfortable and departed soon after lunch, trapped on his crease by Porter. Essex wrested back the initiative to the point where Budinger scored just nine runs from the first 28 balls he faced after the interval before he drove Cook straight back down the pitch for four.
Budinger was finally beaten by a ball from Shane Snater that jagged in to peg back off-stump. Jonny Tattersall followed quickly, misjudging one from Mulder.
Eskinazi and Ben Cox opted largely for caution after three quick, post-lunch wickets, though Cox did scoop a six and a four off Porter and Cook respectively. Even so, the whole tempo of the innings changed with 72 runs scored (from 34 overs) in the afternoon compared to 166 (30 overs) in the morning.
Immediately afterwards, however, Mulder claimed a third wicket when he beat Cox for pace. Ben Green followed Eskinazi in launching Matt Critchley for six over midwicket before he lobbed Snater to short midwicket. And Eskinazi had just reached his fifty when Cook knocked back his off-stump with the new-ball.
The end was nigh when Ben Mike swished across the line to Porter and Snater completed figures of 3-59 when he bowled Josh Hull with a ball that was too good for a No11.
