By Grockle
July 13 2002

We hammered Yorkshire at Taunton and nearly took them again at their festival ground. Excellent bowling from Ian Blackwell today and the secret bowling weapon in...Peter Bowler!! Never mind, Jarvis will be back tomorrow! It was on at the start of the day and we achieved the first target by getting Yorkshire out before they passed the follow on total. This was mostly down to the effort put in by Ian Blackwell with the ball. He took Blakey, Silverwood and Gray to finish with 4 for 49 off 37 overs. Dutch got Dawson and they finished still needing 175 to make us bat again. The problem was that there was less than 2 sessions in which to get them out and the pitch wasn't giving a lot to the seamers, hence the fact that our spin duo bowled a mere 62.2 overs between them in the first innings.

Wood and White put on 77 for the first wicket and saw off the pace of Bulbeck and Jones. It was Dutch and Blackwell who Burns turned to to get us something. Dutch got both openers at 77 and 82 and Blackwell gave the home side the 'willies' when he had McGrath LBW 10 runs later. 92 for 3 and in come Lehmann and Lumb, who have been difficult to get rid of in all our confrontations this year. BUT if you get past these, you're into the soft underbelly of Yorkshire cricket.

The trouble was that it took 66 runs to get Lumb and another 29 to get the Aussie. They'd passed the total and we would have to bat again. In the end it was too much and it looks like we had some silly bowling at the end with the wicket of Lumb going to Mr Peter Bowler (LBW) who stepped in with a very creditable 6 overs, 1 maiden 1 for 20.

More bonus points and the draw. It keeps us in the top flight but it's another match we were in the driving seat for but couldn't get the result. The story of our season. Having said that we did this with a weakened attack. Most of the credit, after the initial onslaught of Matt Bulbeck with his four front end wickets, must go to the slow men Dutch and Blackwell, they put in another 50 overs in the second innings and Blackwell ended with figures for the match of 62 overs, 17 maidens, 6 for 127.

If the present policy at international level is not to play a spinner in favour of an extra batsman, then Blackwell is the perfect player to put in that position. He can play as a one day batsman and provide creditable slow bowling if you want it...will he get the chance?

Anyway, tomorrow, an old favourite will probably return to the Sabre line-up. Because Graham Rose
seems to have aqcuired the usual Somerset bowler hamstring injury and because we have no back-ups left (Peter Trego and Joe Tucker are both out injured!). We have re-signed that master of reverse swing and ex-Somerset death bowler...Paul Jarvis. Out of retirement and playing against your home county, dreams are made of this!