Emilio Gay leads Northants’ battle as Lancashire’s younger spinners are thwarted
Lancashire 544 for 7 dec (Bohannon 128, Wells 119, Salt 107; White 3-85) drew with Northamptonshire 342 (Gay 144, Procter 75; Balderson 3-44, Morley 3-88) and 213 for five (Gay 61)
One winter within the late Eighties the Lancashire gradual left-armer, Ian Folley, was speaking about spin bowling in County Championship matches. It was one of many many eras within the county’s historical past when the crew was making common tilts on the title with out ever profitable it. “You want to know about pressure?” stated Folley. “You turn up at a ground and realise that if it’s a spinning track, everyone’s looking at me and Simmo [Jack Simmons] to win us the game,’ he said. “That’s actual strain.”
Nearly 40 years later, Jack Morley and Tom Hartley are discovering what Folley was on about. It is a Friday in late July 2023 and they are trying to bowl out Northamptonshire on a wicket that had seen 491.1 overs bowled on it over seven days’ play when the present innings began. Areas outside a left-hander’s off stump are showing dark craters made by bowlers’ footmarks – and Northamptonshire have five left-handers in their top six. In truth, Emirates Old Trafford’s Test match pitch is desperate for repair and its winter snooze, so 23-year-old Morley and 25-year-old Hartley are expected to take wickets on it. And they say county cricket is soft…
As things turned out, they didn’t manage it, partly because their opponents’ youngsters showed that they are also learning a thing or two about pressure. Despite conceding a deficit of 202 runs, Northamptonshire’s cricketers, most notably Emilio Gay and Luke Procter but also Sam Whiteman and James Sales, battled as if their First Division survival depended on it and reached the end of the game with five wickets still intact and a lead of 12. The draw changes neither side’s position in the table. Procter’s team are still bottom of the pile and will need at least a couple of wins in September if that situation is to change. Lancashire are still seventh and that is a disappointment to everyone at the club.
Yet what we witnessed on the ground that was hosting an Ashes match just a week ago was still fascinating stuff, not least because we saw a clutch of cricketers coming slowly to an understanding of their disciplines and skills. Not only Lancashire’s spinners, you understand, but also Northamptonshire’s Gay, who followed his century in the first innings with a Verdun-esque 61 in the second, a three-hour vigil which was only ended when he came down the track to Hartley and edged a catch to Keaton Jennings at slip.
Gay’s was the third wicket to fall. Lancastrian hopes had been raised before lunch, first when Ricardo Vasconcelos was leg before to a ball from Tom Bailey that both jagged back and bounced like a crumpet on lino, and then when the right-handed Justin Broad had been caught at slip by Jennings off a beauty from Morley that turned sharply and took the edge. That wicket, though, only ushered in a 96-run partnership between Gay and Whiteman that sucked 39 overs out of the day and took Northamptonshire a good way closer to the draw that says much for their backbone in a hard summer.
All the same, the draw was nowhere near a done deal when Gay was winkled out and much less so when Whiteman inside-edged a catch off Hartley to George Bell at short leg, who clutched the ball in his right hand and scampered away like a cat with the cream.
But in the perfect sense, Procter is a fighter, a top quality that was obvious when he was at Lancashire and isn’t any much less plain now that he leads Northamptonshire. He misplaced Saif Zaib, lbw when taking part in no shot to Luke Wells 5 overs after tea however Sales joined his skipper and stored him steadfast firm for 25 overs. And it says a lot for Sales’ unflappability that Lancashire didn’t actually appear to be taking a wicket within the remaining hour of the sport. Much, too, for the cricketers on each side over the previous 4 days {that a} match which could appear a bit boring to anybody casually perusing the scorecard really supplied a lot quiet enjoyment to anybody who cared to change into engrossed in its ebbs and flows.
Paul Edwards is a contract cricket author. He has written for the Times, ESPNcricinfo, Wisden, Southport Visiter and different publications