It was a tense day at Headingley, cold enough in the shade for the stewards to wear gloves, but hot on the pitch where Somerset wobbled but just about held on to their Championship dream. It took more than a session to break Yorkshire ’s overnight partnership of George Hill and Dom Bess, who played with patience in a seventh-wicket partnership of 166.
Hill fell to a top-edged pull for a season’s best 89 to Craig Overton, who chased him to the rope to say well done. The former Somerset player Bess followed for 77, all material for Tom Abell’s best man’s speech at Bess’s wedding next month. Set 287, Somerset had a start when Josh Thomas was caught behind in the first over, and a couple more wickets followed, the fielders providing regular reminders that the title has never gone to Taunton, before Abell and Tom Lammonby saw things through to the close. Tomorrow’s magic cider number is 214.
Leicestershire, reeling from the 27-point penalty heaped on them by the Cricket Regulator, made international news after the chief groundsman attributed some of his pitch problems to the filming of a new Sourav Ganguly biopic “Dada”, starring Rajkummar Rao, at Grace Road. Out in the middle, the match had become an instant relegation battle with Hampshire – a draw would send both teams down; but a winner would take at least a mathematical chance of survival into the final game. Leicestershire dug their heels in and removed the last six Hampshire wickets for 80. And after being set 334, they were 156 for three at stumps, but without Rehan Ahmed whose eight fours in his 55 had got the pulse racing. Rishi Patel, batting for the last time at Grace Road before he moves to Southampton, hit 27.
The reigning champions, Nottinghamshire, hobble into day four after Ari Karvelas, diverted temporarily from a teaching job in Sussex ’s hour of need, fizzed out their top four, and Jaydev Unadkat knocked out three more, leaving the second innings in tatters. Notts lead Sussex by only 31 with three wickets in hand.
And once more to the drawing board for Lancashire, who suffered an eighth defeat in 10 as Kent knocked off the 56 runs needed to take them into a prime Division Two promotion place. Their only rivals, Northamptonshire, were frustrated by Derbyshire ’s Nick Potts (57) and Randell (45) and must chase another 312 to return to nose to nose at the top.