Warwickshire and Somerset harvested a predictable County Championship draw as a forgettable match finally petered out on the final day at Edgbaston.<\/b><\/p>\n
Set a notional victory target of 377 in 69 overs, Warwickshire plodded to 161-4 as Tom Latham (52 from 103 balls) and Sam Hain (68 not out from 157) escorted their team to safety and the match to a stalemate.<\/p>\n
Somerset had extended their second innings in the morning to 229-8 but not as quickly as they hoped as Australian off-spinner Corey Rocchoccioli took 5-67 on debut.<\/p>\n
It had always appeared that a bland pitch would blunt the victory aspirations of either side and so it proved. <\/p>\n
Both shored up their positions in the middle of Division One with a solid points haul from a match which offered less than vivid entertainment. <\/p>\n
The deployment of two short mid-wickets and two short extras for Latham off Migael Pretorius was about as exciting as it got for the slumbering Edgbaston faithful.<\/p>\n
Somerset resumed on the final morning on 116-3, 283 ahead overall, and started purposefully. <\/p>\n
James Rew completed a 66-ball half-century but two wickets for Rocchoccioli slowed the momentum and changed the plan. <\/p>\n
The spinner unfurled a lovely turning delivery which Rew, on 61, edged to wicketkeeper Kai Smith and Tom Banton then missed a sweep and was lbw.<\/p>\n
Bowling coach Steve Kirby had suggested after day three that Somerset would need 80 overs to try to bowl Warwickshire out, but that point arrived with the lead only 317. <\/p>\n
Tom Abell and Archie Vaughan batted watchfully to prevent a collapse then expanded to add 65 in 14 overs before Abell charged and missed at Rocchoccioli. <\/p>\n
Pretorious had his off-stump removed by Ethan Bamber and Rocchoccioli’s five-for was complete when Craig Overton missed a reverse sweep and was lbw, triggering lunch and the declaration.<\/p>\n
To challenge the target – 377 in two sessions – Warwickshire needed a strong platform but they lost soon both openers. Alex Davies fell to the fourth ball, lbw to Matt Henry and Rob Yates left a gap between bat and pad and Jack Leach, who opened the bowling, turned the ball through it.<\/p>\n
That scuppered any chance of a Warwickshire win, but Somerset’s hopes were ground away over the next two hours by Latham and Hain, who declined to pursue a target of 276 from 34 overs after tea. <\/p>\n
Latham drove a return catch to Overton and Jacob Bethell top-edged a pull at Pretorius but the implacable Hain reached 50 for the 58th time in first-class cricket to see the job through in a sparsely-populated stadium as far-removed as can be from the passionate cauldron it will be when England meet India next week.<\/p>\n
ECB Reporters’ Network supported by Rothesay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warwickshire and Somerset harvested a predictable County Championship draw as a forgettable match finally petered out on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-214497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114746834537350782","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}