County Championship round-up: Dalrymple extracts revenge

Stephen Fay
Sunday 26 April 2009 00:00 BST
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At the new Yankee Stadium in New York, batters are scoring so many home runs the fans cannot contain their excitement. Should they have felt the need to cool down, a visit to one of yesterday's county cricket matches might have done the job. Two of them were hard grinds ending in draws. Surrey lost the third game by five wickets to Derbyshire.

Against Warwickshire at Edgbaston, Hampshire batted through the day and ended 50 ahead with match-saving contributions from Michael Lumb (85), Michael Carberry (65) and Nic Pothas (65 not out).

In Division Two at Lord's a crowd of around 1,000 sat in the sun and were denied entertainment by Glamorgan. Perhaps this was the revenge of James Dalrymple, who felt slighted by Middlesex and decamped to Wales two summers ago. When Glamorgan lost their seventh wicket they were only 245 ahead, and Middlesex sensed a win. But Dalrymple (112 not out) and Robert Croft (52) batted relentlessly on, past the point at which a declaration would have given them the chance of a win. The pair had put on 134 when Dalrymple declared, leaving Middlesex to get 370 runs in 44 overs.

The sole compensation for the spectators was a long glimpse of the prodigious talent of Phil Hughes, Australia's 20-year-old opening batsman. On the fifth day after his arrival in England he scored 118 on an easy wicket. Yesterday he added another 65, on an even easier wicket, not out this time. Hughes is short and stocky. He judges length remarkably fast, and positioned himself precisely to demonstrate that he is a peerless cutter.

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