Championship match ends in a tame draw
July 31, 2024SUFFOLK’S National Counties Eastern Division One match versus Bedfordshire at Bury St Edmunds CC petered out into a tame draw.
All results were possible at the start of Tuesday’s third and final day, with the visitors 142 runs ahead with seven second-innings wickets still intact.
Bedfordshire adopted a cautious approach in the morning session during which two wickets fell – Jack Beaumont taking his fourth of the innings and Jonah Handy his first on Championship debut to dismiss opener Jake Tarling, whose 44 occupied 150 deliveries.
They eventually declared on 306 for 5, George Thurstance scoring 84 and Oli Soames an undefeated 82.
That left Suffolk to chase 362 for victory in a minimum of 58 overs at a run-rate of 6.2 over when none of the three previous innings had even reached four-an-over.
Suffolk slipped to 76 for 3, but Alex Oxley joined Beaumont to steady the ship as Suffolk navigated their way to 165 for five off 55 overs before the two teams shook hands on a draw, Bedfordshire claiming 12 points to Suffolk’s 11.
Beaumont made 81 to top-score for the second time in the match for Suffolk, who had lost the toss on the opening day and had deployed eight different bowlers before lunch on a flat Victory Ground wicket.
These included Suffolk’s second debutant Freddie Cloud who took a wicket with just his ninth ball, but Soames (104) and Sam Kelsall (116) then added 151 for the third wicket, before Soames holed out to Darren Ironside.
That was the first of seven wickets that fell to Tom Harper, who is not 20 until next month, as he claimed figures of 22-2-59-7, aided by two splendid one-handed slip catches by Beaumont.
Harper became the first Suffolk bowler to take seven wickets in an innings since Michael Comber versus Northumberland in June 2017 as the visitors were dismissed for 353.
Half centuries from Beaumont, Oxley and Josh Cantrell, the latter two sharing a sixth-wicket stand of 104 as Cantrell passed 1,000 Championship runs for the county, saw Suffolk reply with 298, Harper adding a useful 43 from 59 balls before being last man out.
That gave Bedfordshire a first-innings lead of 55, which was stretched to 142 by the close of day two, but their delayed declaration on the final day produced a disappointing stalemate.
Mildenhall bowler Handy said afterwards: “From our perspective it was hard to see what their plan was. They maybe could have differently set up the game to give us a target to chase, but it is one of those things.”
Suffolk’s next NCCA Championship match is away to Staffordshire from August 11th-13th, before they host Lincolnshire at Copdock in their final match a week later.
Tom Harper (above centre) is congratulated by wicket-keeper Jacob Marston (left) and Alex Oxley (right) on taking one of his seven wickets in Bedfordshire’s first innings.
Tags: Bedfordshire, Bury St Edmunds CC, Freddie Cloud, Jack Beaumont, Jonah Handy, NCCA Championship, Tom Harper
Categorised in: Suffolk CCC