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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Tanya Aldred at Headingley

County cricket: Jennings blooms with double hundred for Lancashire in Roses match

Keaton Jennings of Lancashire salutes the crowd as he leaves the field after being dismissed for 238 against Yorkshire
Keaton Jennings of Lancashire salutes the crowd as he leaves the field after being dismissed for 238 against Yorkshire. Photograph: Gareth Copley/Getty Images

Roundup: Jennings's 238 puts Lancashire in control of Roses match

A late-afternoon declaration ended a day of earthy toil for Yorkshire, watching ball after ball dart to the rope. Keaton Jennings passed 200, then eclipsed Lancashire’s highest Roses score, and was within touching distance of Darren Lehmann’s record for either side of 252. But a duff call by Phil Salt saw him run out for 238, a swift snatching at his gloves the only sign of Jennings’ irritation, before he raised his bat around the ground.

Jimmy Anderson took the new ball, to warm applause from a crowd sated by runs and chilled by a buffeting wind. But his first delivery was pinged for four, and it was Tom Bailey at the other end who made the breakthrough as Adam Lyth shouldered arms.

Elsewhere there were runs, runs and more runs. Surrey set a world record for the highest first-class total without an individual hundred in notching up 610 for nine declared, with 90s for Ollie Pope, Ben Foakes and Jamie Overton. Seven weary bowlers were put through their paces as Kent maintained their record of conceding at least 500 runs in every first-innings this season.

Five hundred was amassed in the two other Division One games, as Somerset declared on 591 for seven, with a century for Tom Abell, before Gloucestershire lost George Scott to the first ball of the innings. Jack Leach gathered three for 29 before stumps. Northants got close to 600, a century from Luke Procter adding to the glut, two Warwickshire wickets tumbling.

Three quick wickets for Stuart Broad and four for James Pattinson left Middlesex in trouble at Lord’s, and Billy Root inspired Glamorgan’s tail to a first-innings lead over Durham, with four wickets for Matty Potts. There were centuries too for Sussex’s Tom Clark and Derbyshire’s Shan Masood, still on course for 1,000 runs before the end of May.

Updated

First and second edition write-ups done, the sun now beams at Headingley. Yorkshire lost Lyth and Malan before the close, Jimmy Anderson, Lancashire cap faded to maroon, went wicketless . Elsewhere, the story repeats itself: more and more runs.

Thanks for all your contributions BTL. James Wallace will be helming the blog tomorrow, be nice to him y’all. See you Sunday, have a lovely Friday evening.

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Billy Root helped Glamorgan to a first-innings lead at The Riverside. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images

Updated

And as the wind swirls above Headingley, Lancashire move to their highest first-class score against Yorkshire.

And a first first-class wicket for Loten, a snappy caught and bowled to dismiss Bailey. Lancs 533-8. Time for me to write up now for first edition, things should get a bit more interesting quite soon at Headingley.

Tea-time ish scores

Division One

Headingley: Yorkshire v Lancashire 521-7

Bristol: Gloucestershire 33-1 v Somerset 591-7 dec

Beckenham: Kent v Surrey 642-9

Edgbaston: Warwickshire 41-1 v Northamptonshire 597-6dec

Division Two

Derby: Derbyshire 202-1 v Worcestershire 368

The Riverside: Durham 311 v Glamorgan 305-8

Grace Road: Leicestershire 210 v Sussex 271-4

Lord’s: Middlesex 91-2 v Notts 415 all out

Lancs need six runs to break their highest score against the Yorkies.

I must admit to losing a little bit of concentration but it is now tea and they’re sweeping the pitch. Scores round the grounds to follow.

An Ollie Pope/Jamie Overton/Ben Foakes fan writes:

Runs merge into runs here - Lancs must declare soon. Please. 506-7.

After the hammering, more hammering: Gloucestershire get the ultimate in bad starts, losing their first wicket off the first ball of the innings, Scott lbw to Siddle.

Asked why Saqib Mahmood isn’t playing in this match, Lancashire have come up with “no comment.” Make of that what you will.

And Yorks have caught a catch shock: Lyth the safe pair of hands, Salt gone for 37, who must now face the wrath of Keaton in the dressing-room. Lancs 504-7.

Somerset have declared - 591-7, Renshaw 94, Lammonby 76, Abell 142 (apologies, that slipped my radar), Hildreth 53, Gregory 89. Now let’s see the cut of this Bristol pitch’s jib.

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Tom Abell salutes the crowd after reaching his hundred. Photograph: Dan Mullan/Getty Images

Another run-out, this time at Lord’s, where De Caires has been run-out for five, and Robson bowled for 9. It’ll be a long two and a bit days from 39-2 - 376 runs behind.

Sussex’s Clark and Carter chugging on, biffing the resolve out of the plucky Leicestershire attack. Sussex 236-3, a lead of 26. I’m not sure I’d put money on Leicestershire batting out the last day.

A Lancs-trip-up in progress, as Balderson is lbw to Bess, his second, the third wicket since lunch. Maybe Lancs will yet fail the 500 benchmark. Incidentally, as I went for a stroll at lunch, I saw Joe Root having a chat with someone by the Trueman enclosure. Lots of people walked past and did a double take but no-one interrupted a former England captain chewing the fat. Love that about cricket.

Jennings double century was the first by a Lancashire opener since Mike Atherton’s 268 not out v Glamorgan at Blackpool in 1999.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.... Phil Salt makes a bad call and Keaton Jennings is run out just short of Darren Lehman’s record Roses score. I think I saw Jennings pull off his gloves in a gesture of a thimble of irritation before his sheer niceness wins out and he raises his bat to all sides of the ground. Root is on hand to shake his hand. Terrific innings that, despite the four chances Yorkshire let slip through their dodgy digits.

And on it goes as Surrey pass 500, in the footsteps of Somerset and Northants. Generous Kent have now bled first-innings scores of 571, 652, 506, 514 and now 512-6 which all adds up to a pile of sore boots and much gnashing of teeth. And possibly an autumnal trip down to Division Two.

Keaton Jennings’ highest-first class score in his pocket. Patterson mulling the 22-4 it would have been if those two early catches yesterday had been caught.

“Hello Tanya,” Hello Geoff Wignall.

“ A quick totting up of the four 1st Division games at lunch on the 2nd day: an aggregate 18 wickets and 1806 runs, not too many of them scored by test class batsmen.So yes, the run glut can be too much of a ‘good’ thing.”

So which of these merry band of run-scoring batters do we think are Test-class?

The lights are on at Old Trafford, and Vilas is back warming his toes on the Headingley two-bar fire, lbw to Bess for 82. Lancs 434-4 - a declaration just before or after tea we think.

Lunchtime scores

Division One

Headingley: Yorkshire v Lancashire 412-3

Bristol: Gloucestershire v Somerset 453-5

Beckenham: Kent v Surrey 470-6

Edgbaston: Warwickshire v Northamptonshire 471-4

Division Two

Derby: Derbyshire 30-0 v Worcestershire 368

The Riverside: Durham 311 v Glamorgan 156-5

Grace Road: Leicestershire 210 v Sussex 137-3

Lord’s: Middlesex v Notts 415 all out

And with a handshake from Joe Root to Keaton Jennings, that’s lunch.

And there’s Jennings’ double -hundred! A dab to the fine-leg boundary and there’s one happy chappy, enveloped in a huge hug by Dane Vilas. Applauded round the ground and by all the Yorkshire players. His first 200 for Lancs, and only the fourth Roses century by a Lancastrian, following in the footsteps of Dickie Spooner, 200 not out in 1910, Stuart Law, 206 in 2007 and Mohammad Yousuf, 205 not out in 2008.

Updated

A vegan sandwich bag arrives in the press box, courtesy of Headingley - falafel wrap, here we come. Oh and another chance has gone down, this time Vilas slips through those soapy Yorkshire fingers. Jennings nears his double century.

In Division Two, Chris Rushworth has picked another scalp, Sam Northeast for 51. The move to Sophia Gardens proving fruitful for him. Glamorgan 133-5, 182 behind Durham.

Worcestershire are all out for 368; Conners 5-109. Shan Masood is batting.

Sussex have lost a couple of wickets this morning, Haines for (another) fifty and Pujara for an unexpected 3. Tom Clark 44 not out, Sussex 124-3, 86 behind Leicestershire.

And Notts cross the 400 mark, though Toby Roland-Jones has been on the rampage this morning,4-64. Stuart Broad and Steven Fletcher now piling on the agony with a frolicsome partnership of 53. Notts 405-9.

An email! Hello Cressida in Brazil

“Morning/Afternoon Tanya from sunny Bahia.

“Just to let you and the lovely county blog peeps know, that the latest episode from the Final Word has a really brilliant unpicking of the issues surrounding Joe Clarke and sexual violence. Adam is great as ever, but I particularly liked the way Geoff talked about it – how we are all human and make mistakes; giving some strong examples about how Joe Clarke could have engaged with the issues and outlining why talk of his form and the impact on him (rather than the woman involved and any who have experienced sexual violence) makes so many of us uncomfortable.

“A strong recommend and I really hope the ECB are listening,”

Thank you so much Cressida. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I will. The Joe Clarke issue is a knotty one and bound up in cricket’s long-time issues with women. Things are changing for the better, but there is a long way to go.

Let’s have a quick squizz around the Div One grounds:

A third catch for James Bracey at Bristol, but Somerset bat on. Tom Abell 71 not out; Somerset 380-5.

Another Surrey batter falls agonisingly short of his hundred, this time Ben Foakes, for 91, but Joverton and Sam Curran duly making hay. Surrey 414-5.

Vilas belts a six to reach his fifty here at Headingley, and I think it might have gone out of the ground, as a new suitcase of balls is brought out. Very smart it is too - think 1980s executive, code 0000. Nineteen from Rauf’s over: Lancs 361-3.

And poor Warwicks toil away, with Northants scoring fastest of all. Soaring past 400, now 443-4, with Cobb and Procter at the crease.

Worcestershire have lost three this morning, all to Sam Conners. Worcs 351-8.

And thanks to Romeo, for sending me this on Matty Potts which Lizzy Ammon wrote in the Times. To summarise: he had lots of energy as a kid so his parents took him to cricket, he was good, his dad is six foot eight so his Durham coaches pushed him towards bowling and, at a mere six foot two, he hits the pitch hard. He bowls in the mid- eighties, he wants a Test cap, he produces late swing and isn’t afraid of pitching it up, he was a reserve for the white-ball England Caribbean tour, he’d love to push his batting and wants to be a genuine all rounder and he’s a teammate of the new Test captain who is watching him at first hand this very day!

Keaton Jennings gets a fourth life, dropped by Harry Brook, on 167. A frustrated Steve Patterson last night described: “Seventeen or 18 dropped chances this year. And these are not half chances, they are genuine ones you would expect players to take. At some point, it catches up with you.”

A third wicket falls at the Riverside (Glamorgan 41-3), and this time it is Chris Rushworth. Thinking about Matty Potts (2-20)- who may well get an international call up what with all our fast bowlers getting injured and all.

Potts (with 24) leads the Div 2 wicket-taking table, above Shaheen Afridi, above Michael Neser, above Liam Patterson-White. Neither Cricinfo, nor the Cricketers’ Who’s Who, are giving much away, other than he played England U-19 and likes coffee and biscuits.

Steven Patterson has the ball, the blue bucket seats of Headingley are slowly filling, and we wait to see if Jennings can reach 200.

Ali on what might be the Brendon McCullum effect.

Thursday's round-up

In the mould of his new England head coach Brendon McCullum, Ben Stokes purred to 82 at The Riverside for Durham. The first 50 came with relative restraint but two huge sixes followed, swept on one knee as the floodlights came on. Before, though, he could quite reach for the accelerator, he was done by the new ball. There was time before stumps for Matty Potts to take two Glamorgan wickets in what is becoming a fruitful season.

Keaton Jennings’s third consecutive Roses century, and another from Steven Croft, helped Lancashire dominate the first day at Headingley. With a good fistful of members dotted around the ground, be-fleeced and glad to see old friends, Jennings continued where he’d left off at Old Trafford last week. So precise in his movements, he bats like a man who not only irons the guest bed-linen but leaves fresh cut flowers on the side-table.

After being marooned on 99 for 13 balls, Jennings reached his century with a tuck for two, before carefully taking off his helmet and beaming. Croft also toyed hungrily with a tired looking Yorkshire attack, on a flattish pitch, where the fielders let four catches slip through their fingers. A chilly morning wind had left Joe Root fielding with a hand-warmer tucked into the back of his trousers, and Josh Bohannon missed out a chance to impress watching England selector James Taylor.

Jennings’s old Lancashire opening partner, Haseeb Hameed, was given a warm reception at Lord’s after scoring his first century of the season for Nottinghamshire at one of his happiest hunting grounds. Hameed and Steven Mullaney (92 not out) rattled along to 117 for the fifth wicket. Middlesex had to do without Shaheen Shah Afridi, who is returning to Pakistan early to prepare for the white-ball series against West Indies.

Warwickshire were carted round the park by Northamptonshire’s openers Ricardo Vasconcelos and Will Young, who scored 290 between them at Edgbaston. A depleted Warwickshire attack, missing Chris Woakes, Ollie Stone and Liam Norwell, could do nothing much but keep plugging away until Vasconcelos was lbw for 156 after tea, and Young followed for 134.

Runs, runs and more runs for Division One leaders Surrey against Kent, with 96 from Ollie Pope, a quickfire 76 from Ryan Patel and an unbeaten 86 by Ben Foakes. It was hard to know who was more unimpressed, Darren Stevens, after being pummelled repeatedly for four, or Surrey’s players with the quality of the flat whites they purchased from the coffee outlet.

Tom Lammonby and Matt Renshaw put on a lively 172 together in the West Country derby. James Hildreth and Tom Abell followed up with fifties of their own, to put Somerset in a sprightly position against Gloucestershire after being put in. Zak Chappell, on loan from Nottinghamshire, pocketed two for 49.

Elsewhere, Jack Haynes made a second consecutive hundred for Worcestershire at Derbyshire, while Leicestershire bucked the trend by being dismissed for 210 by Sussex, despite Ollie Robinson only bowling one over before succumbing to food poisoning.

And a huge, belated welcome to anyone who is new here today, was yesterday, or has fallen upon it at all this season. I should probably give a brief explanation of the weird workings of the county blog. It is a bit of a one woman/man band. Whoever is helming for the day tries to keep the blog updated with interesting things round the grounds, but sometimes has to intersperse that with other bits of work and also after tea has to write up the round-up report for the paper, so largely disappears. We love getting emails , keeping us informed, telling us stuff we’ve missed, and the BTL section is really friendly, and often drifts off into non-cricket talk, so please do throw yourself in. I’m on tanya.aldred.freelance@theguardian.com or @tjaldred (but I tend not to look at that as much). Er, that’s it!

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CCLive: a nice place to be Photograph: MI News/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

Scores on the doors

Division One

Headingley: Yorkshire v Lancashire 288-3

Bristol: Gloucestershire v Somerset 319-4

Beckenham: Kent v Surrey 318-4

Edgbaston: Warwickshire v Northamptonshire 372-4

Division Two

Derby: Derbyshire v Worcestershire 326-5

The Riverside: Durham 311 v Glamorgan 31-2

Grace Road: Leicestershire 210 v Sussex 39-1

Lord’s: Middlesex v Notts 329-5

Preamble

Good morning! It’s blustery in Leeds today, the wind propelling me into a small but perfectly formed coffee shop on the Otley Road that sold cinnamon buns.

Yesterday was a(nother) day for batting and batting and batting again. Runs everywhere and barely a wicket to drop - except for poor old Leicestershire, who were scurried out by Sussex’s young bairns. And at the Riverside - where Durham were rescued by Ben Stokes’s high jinks. Hundreds for Jennings, for Croft, for Hameed, for Haynes, for Vasconcelos, for Young - and more, you’d think, to come today.

Are we bored of the run glut yet?

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