Warwickshire v Derbyshire - Day 3

For a positive result tomorrow, the last day of this game will need to be more contrived than the result of a “who’s the best rocker: Barry Manilow or Daniel O’Donnell?” competition.

Warwickshire’s batsmen progressed, not without alarms, to 90-0 in reply to Derbyshire’s 226, a deficit of 136. So where does that leave the game, with a decent forecast tomorrow?

Well, the hosts could declare tomorrow morning and lob up some cafeteria bowling in the hope that we set them a challenging but fair total. I suspect that we would not be overly generous in such circumstances and wouldn’t want to lose our first game of the season. Conversely, a challenging chase of, say 325 in 65-70 overs might be interesting, although a slow outfield and slow-ish pitch might make that implausible from both perspectives.

They could also bat for maximum bonus points and aim to rack up 400, accepting that the weather has taken too much out of the game. Doubtless the two skippers are chatting tonight about what may be possible and we’ll get a fair idea of the respective ambitions of the sides when we see what ensues tomorrow.

We didn’t take a wicket today, but as I pointed out last night, bowling with a wet ball isn’t the easiest of things and trying to swing one is a thankless task, akin to trying to plait fog. Wickets tend to go down more by seam than swing at this stage of the year and a wet seam will ‘bite’ less than a dry one.

I’d share in the concern of others elsewhere regarding the limited play yesterday due to bad light. I find it hard to believe that with floodlights on the light is inadequate, especially when we play evening and night time games later in the summer. Perhaps some meteorological  phenomenon meant yesterday in Birmingham was blacker than night, but it’s not very likely.

Unless these two teams produce something spectacular on either side of the competency divide tomorrow, we’ll be looking at a draw and our first points of the season. We’d have happily taken that before the game and I’m sure we would do so now.

P.S. Over at Trent Bridge, Nottinghamshire’s much vaunted batting line up collapsed to 67-6 against Middlesex. 107 ahead with a wicket left, they have it all to do to avoid defeat in their season opener.

Shame, that…