Under-pressure England duo Zak Crawley and Jamie Smith were both dismissed for nine on the opening day of the County Championship.
Starting the season earlier than ever before has been one official reaction to England’s latest Ashes defeat – the 4-1 debacle of last winter – but how that makes for a better nursery for the England Test team has yet to be explained. The overwhelming consideration, of course, is that the height of the summer has to be given over to the Hundred, while red-ball cricket is banished to the extremes.
A pointer to England’s future is that Surrey promoted Smith to No 3 in the place of Ollie Pope. Were Smith to become England’s No 3, it would be as a specialist batsman, not as a wicketkeeper/batsman. In any event Smith was dismissed in the same way as many other England batsmen in the last Ashes, aiming for a lavish drive through extra-cover and caught behind for a paltry score. Crawley fared no better for Kent, falling palpably lbw to his Ashes team-mate Matthew Potts and hardly bothering to hang around to see the umpire’s dreaded raised finger.
At least Italy had some sporting cheer after a trying week. Their football might be in decline, as they failed to qualify for this summer’s World Cup, but their rugby is improving, to judge by the Six Nations, and so is their cricket. The first century of this championship or first-class season was scored by the Italian international batsman Emilio Gay.
Gay, who has an Italian mother, has also represented England Lions as a sturdy left-handed bat. When he moved from Northamptonshire to Durham, he was furthering his career prospects, only to find that Durham were demoted to Division Two in the last gasps of last season. So it was against Kent that Gay scored 128 off 141 balls.
English professional cricket moved a step closer to becoming a 12-a-side game when the first replacement for injury (not only concussion) was allowed on the opening day of this season. Essex’s captain Tom Westley had his thumb broken when batting against Hampshire’s Sonny Baker, and the match referee allowed him to be replaced by the young Essex pace-bowling all-rounder Noah Thain – but Thain can only bat, not bowl, so that it is close to being a like-for-like replacement. Essex’s one-cap England seamer Sam Cook has taken over the captaincy.
Westley will not be able to play in Essex’s next match, a measure designed to stop players manipulating the system. The England and Wales Cricket Board, on announcing this new replacement rule, had said they expected these new substitutions to occur in one in four matches this season, having observed the impact which this same measure had in Australia. A debate should be had before this rule becomes permanent.
The first batsman to be dismissed this season was the captain of Surrey, who are seeking to regain their crown from Nottinghamshire. Rory Burns was run out for four, not so much by Warwickshire as by his opening partner Dom Sibley. Warwickshire have a similar depth of pace bowling to Surrey, led by the former England all-rounder Chris Woakes, but they could not prevent a reviving seventh-wicket stand of 155 between Ben Foakes and Tom Lawes.