[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

County Championship, Division One

vs Nottinghamshire

Day One

Afternoon: Worcestershire's inaugural day/nighter this time last year was a disastrous washout up at Chester-le-Street, but hopes were a lot higher for Trent Bridge on the first day of a promised heatwave. However, skipper Brett D'Oliveira, who rightly gained plenty of plaudits for last week's victory over Lancashire, made perhaps the first shocking decision of his captaincy at two o'clock when the Pears elected not to contest the toss, and instead put Notts directly in to bat on the hottest day of the year so far. To compound matters, the visitors were without talisman Ed Barnard after his richly-deserved call-up to England Lions this week, and so the bowling attack was even more makeshift and inexperienced than usual. Despite a return for spinner Ben Twohig and a first-class debut for Dillon Pennington, Worcestershire failed to make a breakthrough in the first session as Notts made hay while the sun shone.

Evening: The dogged persistence of the Worcs attack at last earned a reward as Jake Libby was caught at slip off the bowling of Twohig. However, that was the only wicket to fall for the majority of the day as Notts reached the supper interval on 209-1.

Night: After a long day's thankless toil, the pendulum swung a little more in Worcestershire's favour in the final hour of play as Martin Guptill, in his first bowling spell for the county, dismissed Nash LBW. Two overs later, with the second new ball, Steve Magoffin succeeded in bowling Samit Patel and then having Billy Root caught behind off the very next ball. There was no hat-trick for the veteran, but he did succeed in claiming the scalp of Ross Taylor for a duck a couple of overs later, leaving Notts 336-5 at close; a far better outcome to the day than the Pears had dared hope for at eight o'clock.


Monday also saw Pears cult hero Jack Shantry announce his retirement due to injury troubles. His appearances have been few and far between for a good couple of years, but his peculiar bowling action was always a sight to see - claiming 57 Championship wickets in our last Division One outing in 2015 - as well as being no mug with bat in hand. He and Joe Hart were fellow goalkeepers and cricketers in their schooldays, and the word is that Hart was always considered Shantry's understudy between the sticks. Both men were ultimately given the choice of whether to pursue cricket or football professionally, and in another world we might have seen Jack Shantry pulling off wonder-saves to keep England in the 2014 World Cup while Joe Hart led Worcestershire to triumph with a century and a 10w haul against Surrey in the County Championship, just as his former schoolmate did in his most memorable match. But reality instead gave us a solid county cricketer and a great club servant in Jack Shantry, and his performances will be missed. I wish him every success in years to come as an ambassador for the Pears and as a future umpire.