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Mark Adair’s miserly spell embodied a tight all-round bowling effort as Ireland took a step closer to clinching a spot in the playoffs with an eight-wicket win over Jersey.Man-of-the-Match Adair struck with the fourth ball of the game, getting Harrison Carlyon driving to mid-off for a duck. Jersey briefly counterattacked through Nick Greenwood and Ben Stevens, who flicked and drove for a trio of fours off Boyd Rankin in the fourth over. The pair added 36 in quick time as Greenwood concluded the boundary sequence with an edge past Gary Wilson for four before he was bowled by David Delany to end the fifth, beaten for pace driving to make it 36 for 2.Jersey would not score another boundary until the 16th over as Ireland strangled them. Adair produced a wicket maiden in the sixth over, foxing Jonty Jenner with a slower ball to trap him leg before for a second-ball duck. David Delany struck again next over as Wilson kept a slip in for the new batsman Jake Dunford and it resulted in an edge there to Andy Balbirnie for a golden duck. The middle order continued to struggle as Craig Young induced a drive from Stevens to Gareth Delany at cover for 25 to end the 10th over at 49 for 5.Ireland then suffered an injury scare when David Delany limped off midway through his third over in the 13th with a leg problem but Ireland team officials said later they believed it was just cramp. George Dockrell came on to finish the over and struck with the wicket of Ben Ward who skied a drive to long-off. Corey Bisson charged Gareth’s legspin to be stumped, making it 76 for 7 in 15.Adair came back in the 17th to claim his third as Dominic Blampied edged a drive low to Wilson behind the stumps for 20. Charles Perchard drove a sharp return catch back to Boyd Rankin in the 19th before Anthony Hawkins-Kay was run-out off the final ball of the innings, trying to steal a bye, as Jersey were dismissed for 105.Paul Stirling muscled Ireland’s chase with an unbeaten 58 off 37 balls. He added 35 with Kevin O’Brien for the first wicket before O’Brien drove Perchard to Hawkins-Kay at extra-cover. The only other wicket to fall was Balbirnie for 33, skying a drive off Blampied’s legspin for another catch at extra-cover by Hawkins-Kay.Stirling brought up his fifty with a six over long-on to bring Ireland one shot away from victory. He finished it off by slog-sweeping Blampied over square leg for another six.Ireland face winless Nigeria in their final Group B match. A heavy win could boost their net run rate and put them in position to possibly claim first place depending on the tiebreaker as they jostle with Oman and Canada for pole position.

Mashrafe Mortaza will captain Dhaka Platoon during the 2019-20 Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) season. Mashrafe is recovering from a back injury, and had also sustained a groin injury last month. He has begun training with the Platoon team as part of his rehabilitation process.Mashrafe has captained three BPL teams in the past, and led each of them to the title at least once: Dhaka Gladiators in 2012 and 2013, Comilla Victorians in 2015, and Rangpur Riders in 2017.Despite all his success as a captain in the BPL, Mashrafe wasn’t a popular choice in last month’s player draft, since he hadn’t played any competitive cricket since the World Cup in July. He missed the subsequent Sri Lanka series with a hamstring injury, and hasn’t played any domestic cricket either.Platoon eventually signed him as their second A-plus category pick, having earlier acquired Tamim Iqbal with the draft’s first call.Platoon coach Mohammad Salahuddin is confident Mashrafe will be available from the start of the tournament, which begins on December 11.”I think he can play the whole tournament,” Salauddin told reporters on Saturday. “I hope that he will perform. Today he bowled for the first time since his injury. There is a problem in his rhythm but I think that if he bowls for a few days then it will be sorted out. The main advantage for us is his experience. We can never deny that. When he will play, he will give 100 per cent effort.”He has talked to the physio when he started bowling. He didn’t feel any pain when he was bowling. It also looked normal to me. I think Mashrafe is more motivated than me. He has been doing practice individually for last few days to regain fitness. He has reduced his weight. He has been trying to be fit. I think he is more motivated to do well for himself and the team.”Platoon will take on Rajshahi Royals in their first match of the season in Mirpur on December 12.

Rajshahi Royals captain Andre Russell has credited Mohammad Nawaz for taking the pressure off him and helping the side to the BPL title on Friday. The pair plundered 71 off 34 balls, with Nawaz surprisingly dominating the partnership with an unbeaten 41 off 20 balls. The stand lifted Rajshahi to 170 for 4, which proved 21 too many for Khulna Tigers.ALSO READ: Nawaz, Russell fire Rajshahi to BPL titleRussell also praised wicketkeeper-batsman Irfan Sukkur for his fifty under pressure in the first half of Rajshahi’s innings. Sukkur became the first uncapped Bangladesh player to hit a half-century in the BPL final.”Once I was there until the end, we could definitely be more aggressive,” Russell said. “[Khulna] bowl well in the death but when two good batters [are] swinging from the hips, anything can happen. Well played to [Mohammad] Nawaz. He took a lot of pressure off me. He gave us the punch that we needed going into bowling. Irfan Sukkur is big-hearted guy. I have been telling him to believe in himself, you can hit the ball. Just be positive. When a big player speaks to these guys, they can move mountains.”Russell, who became the first overseas captain to lift the BPL title, said that he didn’t find it too difficult to deal with domestic cricketers.”It wasn’t that difficult [to be a foreign captain],” he said. “The first week, a few practice sessions and the first two games, was the time to know what each player is about – whether a bowler was better with the new ball, in the middle overs or at the death. It took me a few games but everyone really pulled through when I called on them. Rabbi bowled well tonight. Irfan has been doing well.”Russell said that he wanted to make sure that the domestic cricketers and the helpers around the team get paid, even though there was no prize money in this tournament. In the last BPL, the champions received BDT 2 crore (USD 250,000) while the runners-up side got BDT 85 lakh (USD 106,250).”In franchise cricket, every player looks forward to the prize money,” he said. “But for me, winning the tournament is everything. It might sound like I don’t like money. “I just want to make sure that these local guys who helps us with our bags and always around the team, is taken care of. They get some bonus. I am happy once they and the local players are taken care of. This is what matters the most.”Russell also said that he enjoyed his stint with Rajshahi with whom he had won his first T20 tournament as a captain. “It is actually a good feeling,” he said. “I didn’t really notice [that I was the first foreign captain to win the BPL]. They trusted my ability. I believe in myself as well, to get the job done. I contributed as much as I could. We had a very good unit. Everyone showed up tonight.”My first championship as a captain is really special to me. As a captain, you don’t want to be selfish. At the same time, you have to believe in other bowlers. Everyone answered and came to the party tonight.”

A career-best fourth position for Marnus Labuschagne and a move up to No. 10 for Quinton de Kock were the headlines of the year-end ICC rankings for men’s batting in Test cricket. India captain Virat Kohli stayed on top of the list – for 274 days in 2019 – with second-placed Steven Smith, who was the No. 1 batsman for 91 days earlier in the year, behind him.Labuschagne’s scores of 63 and 19 in Australia’s 247-run win against New Zealand in Melbourne pushed him up by one slot from No. 5. He began the year ranked 110th, with only two Tests against his name, but was prolific in his 11 outings in the format since, making 1104 runs in 17 innings at an average of 64.94.Wicketkeeper-batsman de Kock, meanwhile, advanced eighth places to get in the top ten following his Player-of-the-Match contribution, with scores of 95 and 34, in South Africa’s 107-run victory in the series-opener against England in Centurion.Australia fast bowler Pat Cummins retained his spot atop the bowler’s rankings in Tests following his first-innings five-wicket haul in Melbourne. He has occupied the top position for 322 days this year, while South Africa pacer Kagiso Rabada, who was No. 1 for 44 days after starting 2019 in top position, finished the year at No. 3.Replacing Rabada in the second spot was New Zealand quick Neil Wagner, who climbed one position on the back of his seven-wicket match haul in Melbourne. The retiring Vernon Philander advanced three positions up to No. 5 to complete the top five on the bowlers’ rankings alongside the fourth-placed Jason Holder, who continued to lead the allrounders’ rankings in Tests. Save for the fifth-placed R Ashwin, who climbed up one spot, the top five allrounders in Tests – Ravindra Jadeja, Ben Stokes and Philander the others – retained their spots.As far as team rankings for the World Test Championship (WTC) go, Australia consolidated their position in second place of the points table. They added 40 points from their win in Melbourne to take their tally to 256 points from nine games. Top-placed India are 104 points clear of Australia while South Africa collected 30 points after their first win in the WTC and trail New Zealand and England, who occupied the fifth and sixth positions with 60 and 56 points respectively.

Joe Clarke was used to being in the spotlight. Since his debut for Worcestershire at the age of 18 in 2015, his story had encompassed only success and the promise of more. This time it was different.This time the headlines were not about Joe Clarke the England batsman in waiting, as they had tended to be during his rapid rise as the golden boy of New Road. They were about Clarke as a central figure in a grubby tale of sexist, misogynistic behaviour that many had imagined to belong to distant, less enlightened times, and which had profound consequences for one of those involved.Sitting in an office overlooking his new home ground at Trent Bridge, Clarke confides that the dark shadow cast by the episode is still there. “If I could go back and change what happened, I would,” he said. “For all the parties involved. That thought runs through my mind every day.”He is referring to the shocking consequences of a night out in Worcester almost three years ago that were thrust brutally into the public domain in January of last year, when his former Worcestershire team-mate, Alex Hepburn, now serving a prison sentence, stood trial on a charge that he had raped a woman in an apartment in the city centre. Clarke, who had gone to the bathroom to be sick and subsequently passed out there while the alleged offence was taking place, having previously had consensual sex with the same woman, appeared in court as a key witness.The trial concluded with the jury failing to reach a verdict but a retrial was scheduled for April, when Hepburn would be found guilty and sentenced to five years in custody. In the meantime, the emergence in the first trial of sordid messages exchanged between Hepburn, Clarke and another former New Road colleague, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, via WhatsApp, had led to Clarke and Kohler-Cadmore being withdrawn from an England Lions squad preparing to go to India, pending likely disciplinary action.By the time of the retrial, Clarke was two weeks into his debut season for Nottinghamshire, to whom he had moved at the end of the 2018 season. He did not need to miss any cricket in order to appear but when Hepburn’s guilty verdict was announced on April 12, Nottinghamshire were playing Somerset at Trent Bridge.At the end of the match, in which Clarke scored just two runs in each innings after making 112 and 97 not out on his Championship debut for the county the week before, Nottinghamshire head coach Peter Moores was reluctant to be drawn into discussing Clarke’s state of mind but admitted he had found it difficult to concentrate.His new employers hoped it would be a short-term distraction but it proved not to be the case. Clarke had been signed as one of the hottest young prospects around, a batsman who by 22 years old had scored more first-class hundreds than any English batsman at the equivalent age in the modern era apart from Alastair Cook. Yet his form for the remainder of the season, apart from an unexpected flourish in the final round of the Championship, betrayed only fleeting glimpses of the player Nottinghamshire thought they had signed.Subsequently, Clarke and Kohler-Cadmore were charged with bringing cricket into disrepute over their part in the unsavoury WhatsApp group and the crude game of sexual conquests it revealed. They were ultimately fined £2,000 each and banned for four matches, the suspension deemed to have already been served by the matches they missed by being dropped from the Lions tour.The punishment imposed by the ECB struck some as rather light, although it has to be remembered that however deplorable their behaviour might have been, neither Clarke nor Kohler-Cadmore had committed a criminal offence. There were punishments of another kind, though. Self-inflicted, psychological ones for which neither player seeks sympathy, but real nonetheless.ALSO READ: Kohler-Cadmore’s ‘U-turn’ deserves credit, but wider questions remain“It was difficult last season to go out there and focus on my game,” Clarke said. “It was the first time in my career that I’d walked out to the middle with something in my mind other than my batting.”Lots of players have things going on in their personal lives but after the court case mine were in the public domain, for everyone to see. I couldn’t leave them behind. I might try to but, in the early weeks of the season at least, I’d hear things said, sometimes in the crowd, sometimes by opposition players. Then it was at the front of my mind again.”Looking back now, the way I am now, I don’t think it would affect me as much as it did. But at the time it was very raw. There were so many emotions going through my mind.”Clarke struggled for form after a bright start to the Championship season•Getty Images

Some related to the damage done to how he was portrayed. “I had previously been associated only with positive things,” he said. “I’d been on four Lions tours in a career of only five or six years. If there was a story about Joe Clarke, it was about being one of the batters with a chance of playing for England. All positive.”I’d wanted to be seen here as Joe Clarke, the successful Nottinghamshire batsman. I felt all that was being taken away from me because now I had this other tag, and it stayed with me all season.”As soon as the extent of Clarke’s involvement in the WhatsApp group and the behaviour linked to it became apparent, Nottinghamshire made it clear to him that there was a level of conduct of which they expected none of their players to fall below.Yet, as with Alex Hales after the drug test failures that saw him cast out by England in a World Cup year, they wanted to help their player find a path forward and arranged for him to see a psychologist, which Clarke says helped him.Nonetheless, as match followed match with no sustainable improvement in his form, the county’s patience wore thin. Eventually he was dropped, from the Vitality Blast quarter-final against Middlesex and the subsequent Championship fixture. “It was the first time I had been dropped in my career and it was a hard thing to hear,” Clarke said.Inevitably, too, there were feelings of regret, even remorse about what he had allowed himself to become involved with.”It was a long time ago and it feels now like I was young and naive and probably immature in a way,” he said. “At the time, it felt like it was just three mates talking in a private chat but seeing it in the light that I see it now…”You look back and of course I regret it. Obviously I do. If I could take back everything that happened, in terms of the whole situation for all the parties involved, then I would. It runs through my mind every day.”But I am a lot older now. People might have judged me for what happened but I’ve learned a hell of a lot from my experiences and I think I’m going to be better for it. I’ve made some changes in my own way of life and in the way I train.”There is clearly regret, too, that he was not able to deliver the performances for Nottinghamshire that were expected of him in a season that ended in the most ignominious of relegations, without a single win to their name. “I was a new player with big expectations on me,” he said. “I wanted to be someone who was consistently performing and that did not happen.”If there was a benefit to be obtained from being dropped it was the chance for he and Moores to have one-to-one conversations purely about his cricket. As he grappled with his psychological problems, Clarke had neglected his technique but Moores was able to identify issues that were making him vulnerable.”We looked at some clips of Marnus Labuschagne,” Clarke said. “We thought that this was a batsman with similar movements and a similar game to mine. I came in on a day off and did some work, went back into the team for the last home game of the season and scored two hundreds.”It still was not enough to provide even a late-season glint of brightness in Nottinghamshire’s Championship season. Already relegated during the round that Clarke missed, they piled up a season-high 498 in the first innings but still managed to lose against opponents Warwickshire by eight wickets.A draw against Surrey in the final round completed a full summer without a Championship win in a campaign in which the travails of the team did little to improve Clarke’s state of mind. His own struggle for form was mirrored by several others, fellow new signings Ben Duckett and Ben Slater among them.”The dressing room was a tough place to be in terms with how we dealt with being relegated,” he said. “There were some very upset people, about individual form and the way our team had performed. The way we were relegated, in a year where only one team went down after we’d started among the favourites to win the title, was a really hard pill to swallow.”A winter of reflection, plus more new faces, has yielded renewed optimism. Clarke, confidence buoyed by those runs against Warwickshire and the bonus of a contract with Manchester Originals he knew nothing about until a congratulatory text arrived from a friend, is trying to see this year as his real debut season for Nottinghamshire and the last one as a false start. Kohler-Cadmore’s recall to the Lions squad is further encouragement.Tom Kohler-Cadmore is back in the England Lions squad in Australia•Getty Images

“I loved my time at Worcestershire but coming here seemed like the right next step and it was such a shame when there was so much expectation on me last year that I couldn’t perform the way I wanted,” he said.”I’ve not heard from anyone in the England set-up but I was led to believe that after the [disciplinary] hearing the selection criteria would be the same for me as anyone else. If I can score some runs and help Notts go straight back up we’ll see where it leads.”I can’t change what has been done, much as I’d like to. The only thing I can control is the future so I want to look forward now, rather than back.”All I can do is work as hard as I can and put in consistent performances for Nottinghamshire. If I’m doing that then I’m sure I’m knocking on the right door.”

To say Australia enjoyed an unbeaten and dominant summer in 2019-20 is not quite true.Yes, the Test team proper dominated Pakistan and New Zealand, hurtling to five successive victories through the prolific feats of David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne, stubborn support from Steven Smith and the relentless nature of the bowling attack.But one tier down from the very top, the Australia A side twice assembled for matches against touring teams, the Pakistanis in Perth in November and then the England Lions at the MCG this week, and on both occasions they performed poorly.In between, Australia’s Under-19s team were, save for one breathless escape against England, a long way from contending for the World Cup contested in South Africa. This is all to suggest that while the shopfront window of Australian cricket is currently in rude health, the results underneath demonstrated that there are no guarantees that things will stay that way beyond the generations of Smith, Warner, Nathan Lyon, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc.The just-completed pink-ball game against an England Lions team featuring the likes of Zak Crawley, Keaton Jennings, Dom Sibley, Dom Bess and Craig Overton was a sobering one for the selection chairman Trevor Hohns, who watched much of the proceedings from a perch high in the MCG’s members’ enclosure.After winning the toss, the captain Moises Henriques chose somewhat surprisingly to bowl first, allowing the visitors to accumulate a sizeable first innings as Michael Neser struggled notably to fill the shoes of Peter Siddle now the older man has marched off into international retirement.In response, Australia A’s batsmen offered precious little, with the almost lone exception of Kurtis Patterson. After a summer in which he has been blighted by a quad injury, and a little more than a year on since he notched a percussive century against Sri Lanka at Manuka Oval in only his second Test, Patterson’s determination and poise were welcome, even if conditions could not have been further removed from those the Test side will face in Bangladesh in mid-year.”The conditions for what we have in Australia to Bangladesh, you probably couldn’t ask for anything more opposite,” Patterson said. “Who knows what will be read into by the selectors, but it’s always nice to be in winning teams, those teams generally that are winning games have the most players picked, so if we can try and make a Shield final first of all and number two, hopefully lift that Shield at the end of the season, whatever happens, happens.”The quad’s going really well, it’s got to have some work done to it to get back to 100%, but in terms of being able to play cricket and do my job, it’s well and truly fine. It has been a disjointed season so I wasn’t sure what to expect coming back this back half of the year, generally the Duke ball or pink ball can move around a little bit. So time in the middle is so valuable, and now the focus shifts to trying to win the Shield for New South Wales.”Others did not respond so well to the scenario before them, which conjured up different forces to the pressure being felt in Perth when Australia A took place in what was effectively a Test trial immediately before the start of the home schedule. Instead of that level of tension, this match was played with a sense of some isolation, away from the pointy end of the Shield season, in the wake of the Big Bash League, and without the context of a Test series to strive for. In other words, much of the motivation needed to be self-generated.Trevor Hohns watches Australia A struggle against England Lions•Getty Images

A lack of context had already been discernible from the withdrawal Will Pucovski (concussion) James Pattinson (back) and Marcus Stoinis (shoulder) for fitness reasons, not so long after Glenn Maxwell had absented himself from Australia’s tour of South Africa to get surgery on an issue he had been successfully managing during the BBL. Players, with so much demand for their time and different price points at which their services can be sold, are growing perceptibly choosier about where, when and how much they will play.The Lions, of course, have been in the far more cohesive and team-oriented posture of a full tour, with some being on the third leg of their winter trekking after the senior team’s travels to New Zealand and then South Africa. As a result, they looked focused and hungry in both their practice habits and their playing ones, also motivated by the idea that the MCG will be the venue in which many of them will be vying for the Ashes urn late next year.Patterson’s references to the Shield were pointed, and it cannot be disputed that the Australia A players felt some pangs of regret at not being able to play for their states in a critical round of the domestic competition. In their absence, others have shown their skills, not least the fast emerging talent of Cameron Green, who at the age of 20 has already posted a third first-class century for Western Australia. It’s that sort of peer pressure that will ultimately drive all players to be better, finding the ways to endure in long-form cricket despite the attractions of the BBL and other T20 tournaments around the world.But it was telling, too, to ponder how different the landscapes have been for many of the emerging players in both England and Australia over the past decade. The BBL has provided a sizeable additional income stream, allowing players who secure healthy state and BBL contracts to earn a comfortably better living than those in England playing county cricket and T20 matches under the same, single contract.Though that is about to change with the onset of the Hundred, Australian cricketers have been able to do quite well without needing to make the extra sacrifices inherent in stretching for a baggy green to make their own. This, too, is where the fortunes of the Under-19 team become relevant. By their performances but also their behaviour, the squad in South Africa demonstrated a tendency towards immaturity and a lack of resilience that did not always bode well for the future, when they face quality opponents from all over the world in the crucible of a Test match.No-one doubts the ability of a young batsman the calibre of Jake Fraser-McGurk, for instance, but it will be intriguing to see whether his generation is able to develop the hungry attitude of learning that made Labuschagne and Smith so successful in the long-run, after times in their junior careers when they were far from the most obvious or popular talents at their age level. As was the case at the MCG this week, in a landscape where plenty of money is available from multiple sources, the motivation will have to come from within.

Yorkshire have announced that their three overseas signings for the 2020 season – R Ashwin, Keshav Maharaj and Nicholas Pooran – have had their contract terminated by mutual consent.Ashwin, who has previously played county cricket for Worcestershire and Nottinghamshire, had been due to play the majority of the County Championship season, while Pooran was set to re-join the club for the T20 Blast having played three times in the competition last summer. Maharaj had been due to play the first two games of the County Championship season.All professional cricket in England and Wales has been suspended until July 1 at the earliest due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and several counties have now cancelled contracts for their overseas players both as a cost-saving measure and as a reflection of the uncertainties surrounding international travel.”I really appreciate the players’ understanding in this matter,” said Martyn Moxon, Yorkshire’s director of cricket. “We have been in regular contact with the players and their agents throughout this Covid pandemic.”They have been extremely professional and appreciate the uncertainty facing counties at present. We hope that we will be able to see them at Emerald Headingley in the future.”

Fabian Allen has been ruled out of the 2020 Caribbean Premier League after missing his flight from Jamaica to Barbados.Players, staff and officials were required to arrive in Trinidad two weeks before the start of the tournament on August 18, with a number of charter planes organised to fly them to the island.Allen, who was retained by St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in last month’s draft, was due to reach Barbados on an internal flight on Monday, August 3 before boarding the charter to Trinidad, but was late to the airport and missed his flight.”Unfortunately there was some confusion with his understanding of the flight details and he missed the flight,” Allen’s agent confirmed to ESPNcricinfo. “We explored all possibilities, but due to the pandemic and travel restrictions in Trinidad, the charter flight on Monday was the only way he could enter the country.”ALSO READ: Walsh, O’Donnell step in after Patriots lose top coaching staffUnder Trinidad and Tobago’s tight lockdown rules, nobody is able to come in or out of the country other than on those charter flights, meaning Allen will not be replaced in the squad. Those involved in the tournament are currently quarantining in the Hilton hotel in Port-of-Spain, and all tested negative upon their arrival.Allen’s absence is the latest in a series of blows for the Patriots. He has been a revelation for them with the bat in the competition in the last two seasons, making 337 runs at a strike rate of 181.18. He has also chipped in with the ball, and took one of the CPL’s best-ever catches as a substitute fielder in 2017.The franchise’s head coach Simon Helmot withdrew from the tournament following a positive Covid-19 test and a clash with Royal Challengers Bangalore’s pre-IPL camp meant his assistant Malolan Rangarajan would also be unable to travel.ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Left arm-spinner Dennis Bulli also withdrew following a positive test, and was replaced by Trinidad and Tobago legspinner Imran Khan. Rassie van der Dussen was unable to confirm his travel plans, with his place taken by Otago batsman Nick Kelly.ALSO READ: All CPL players test negative on arrivalThe other late withdrawals from the tournament were Afghans Qais Ahmad, Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Noor Ahmad, who did not have the required transit visa to pass through the UK and board one of the CPL’s charter flights.Antum Naqvi, an Australian allrounder who has been part of Lahore Qalandars’ development programmes, will train with the Jamaica Tallawahs but is not part of their squad. Four members of the party that toured England for West Indies’ recent Test series have been added as replacement players: Shamarh Brooks and Keon Harding (Barbados Tridents), Jermaine Blackwood (Tallawahs) and Roston Chase (St Lucia Zouks).

Essex 298 (ten Doeschate 78, Browne 61) and 202 for 8 (A Cook 66) beat Kent 387 (Kuhn 140, Robinson 78) and 112 (Harmer 4-35) by two wicketsSam Cook and Adam Wheater rolled Essex over the winning line as the county champions edged a Bob Willis Trophy thriller over Kent by two wickets.Essex still required 31 runs when Cook, who turned 23 on Tuesday, and wicketkeeper Wheater came together following a batting collapse created by Ivan Thomas.Former England captain Sir Alastair Cook and 21-year-old debutant Feroze Khushi had put on 86 runs for the fifth wicket to tilt the balance towards Essex.But Thomas, who missed the 2019 season after he needed surgery to reconstruct his anterior cruciate ligament, took four wickets in 16 legal balls to give the hosts the jitters.Then he ninth-wicket pair hung on in front of an unfittingly empty Cloudfm County Ground, Chelmsford, with Sam Cook scoring the winning runs to send Essex top of the South Group table, claiming 21 points to Kent’s seven.Kent had been on top of the match for two and a half days, having boasted a first-innings lead of 89.But things started to unravel when they were bowled out for 112, thanks to Simon Harmer’s four wickets and fast bowlers Sam Cook and Jamie Porter’s contributions on day three.Their first mission on the fourth day was to get nightwatchman Porter out quickly, which Grant Stewart managed in the 10th over – the usual No.10 striking to Daniel Bell-Drummond, who like Sam Cook was celebrating his birthday, at short cover.That brought Alastair Cook to the crease, where he set up for the long haul – starting with a patient 37-run partnership with usual opening partner Nick Browne.Kent then forced another twist in the topsy-turvy contest when Stewart and Hamidullah Qadri shared three wickets in five overs, for only 13 runs.Qadri found Browne’s edge to give him his first wicket for his new team after moving from Derbyshire.Stewart then returned for his second spell of the day and struck immediately when Essex skipper Westley nicked behind, before Varun Chopra followed suit in his next over.It would undoubtably have been a nervy time to arrive at the crease for only his second first-class innings, but Khushi shrugged off the butterflies to rebuild with Alastair Cook.While Cook played his trademarked flicks and jabs, Khushi pulled off a number of flowing shots – the best of which came when he elegantly cut and then pulled Thomas in the 48th over. Cook reached his 181st first-class half-century in 93 balls, brought up with a fine legside flick, before the 50 stand came up with Khushi.Essex then suffered their second wobble of the day as Thomas gave Kent hope.Cook may have felt a tad aggrieved to have been given out lbw to a ball angling across him, but Khushi could not quibble his edge behind.That left Essex still requiring exactly 50, and only 20 more runs had been added before Ryan ten Doeschate was lbw to one which stayed low, with Harmer nicking the next ball behind to Ollie Robinson. Thomas returned figures of 4 for 32.But Wheater and Sam Cook shared the last 31 runs to get Essex up and running in the inaugural Bob Willis Trophy.

For cricketers with an abundance of talent batting is a deceptively straightforward business and Jonny Bairstow plays at his best when he remembers every word of that. Rather than grousing about whether he will keep wicket, where in the top six he will bat or what other people are saying about him, he is at his finest when he trusts some fine attacking instincts whilst also ensuring his defence is sound. Satisfying that latter proviso has been the problem for a couple of years or so, of course. A tally of one century and four fifties in his last 33 Test innings and the frequency with which Bairstow has been either bowled or lbw suggests his technique is suspect, particularly so when facing balls that jag back in to him.Some of these frailties and much of the talent were apparent even as Bairstow made 75 at Trent Bridge on the sort of dreamy summer afternoon when Paul Morel once went walking with Miriam. However, let us take a punt that the Yorkshire batsman does not read much DH Lawrence, albeit the latter might have enjoyed writing about a man so revealingly at the mercy of his humours. Let us instead remember the 14 fours Bairstow hit in his 171-minute innings but also the trouble he found facing Zak Chappell with the new ball. Let us also note that this was the Yorkshireman’s first first-class half-century since he made 52 in last August’s Ashes Test at Lord’s.It is to Bairstow’s credit that he battled through that early period, even though he was more or less cut in half by three balls that broke back sharply. Chapple had already enjoyed success with his first ball of the day when Tom Kohler-Cadmore was surprised by a lifting delivery and edged a catch to Matt Carter at second slip. For at least half an hour the Nottinghamshire bowler was a couple of handfuls and his potency with the new ball was revealed again very late in the day when he removed both Jordan Thompson for 33 and Steve Patterson for 4 in the same over. By then, though, Yorkshire’s lead was above 150 and there is now every prospect of them setting a ticklish target for a team that has not won a first-class match since August 2018.Adam Lyth and Bairstow’s 131-run stand played the major role in giving their side that intriguing opportunity. They rode the early storm and waited for the ball to soften during a morning when batting was never easy. However, while the pair may have made the day’s only half-centuries the lead was a trifling 44 when their partnership ended and it needed two further substantial stands to set up what might be a second Trent Bridge classic in the space of a week.Samit Patel made key breakthroughs•PA Images via Getty Images

First Harry Brook and Jonny Tattersall put on exactly 50 for the fifth wicket and then, when Brook had been taken at slip by Steven Mullaney off Samit Patel’s second ball after tea, the impressively combative Thompson shared a stand of 54 with Tattersall, who will resume on 41 not out when the final day of this game begins. Yet it remains hard to see how Yorkshire’s lower middle-order could have mounted their later resistance had Bairstow and Lyth not prepared the ground. Neither man played with the fluency they sometimes own but that made their determination to battle through the first session all the more creditable.Their stand lasted nine minutes short of three hours and it said as much about Lyth and Bairstow’s mental toughness as it did about their batting techniques. For there was never a point on this third day when the bowlers’ hopes were merely fond. Despite the loss of Jake Ball with what looked to be a side injury six overs into the morning, Mullaney’s attack stuck to its lines on a Trent Bridge pitch that offered enough turn and variable bounce to keep the spinners interested. The skipper’s deployment of Carter and Patel in the heart of the afternoon suggested he knew fine well where his team best chances lay and that strategy was richly rewarded when Yorkshire lost three wickets for one run in 18 balls.First Lyth tried to drive Patel through the on side but merely snicked a catch to Mullaney at slip. The Yorkshire opener appeared mystified, although surely more by the manner of the dismissal than James Middlebrook’s decision. Next over the prized wicket of Bairstow fell when the Yorkshire batsman clipped Carter off his hip without much conviction and saw Haseeb Hameed take a fine one-handed catch to his right at short leg. The same alliance sent Dawid Malan back to the pavilion with only a single to his name, leaving Yorkshire effectively 45 for 3. Tattersall joined Brook, who is perhaps in the best form of any Yorkshire batsman at the moment. Another wicket or two then and everyone might have been going home tonight. Instead of which we have another of those richly tantalising days in which four-day county cricket seems to specialise.