The Cricketer looks back on round two of the 2022 County Championship season and looks at some of the outstanding performances...
Shan Masood (Derbyshire)
After twice failing to convert two fifties into three figures during the opening round, Masood wasn't about to spurn this latest opportunity.
Mickey Arthur's marquee winter arrival struck 239, the highest by a Pakistan batter in the LV= Insurance County Championship - beating Zaheer Abbas' 230 not out for Gloucestershire against Kent back in 1976.
The left-hander hit 24 fours on his way to a first-class best score and while tougher challenges are sure to come than a depleted Sussex attack, it was a continuation of his fine form in round one.
Tom Haines (Sussex)
The new captain down at Hove helped avoid back-to-back defeats during his opening two games as skipper with a sixth first-class century and a lifetime-best score of 243.
Haines batted for more than 10 hours to help the save the game for Sussex and put on 351 for the third wicket with Cheteshwar Pujara - narrowly short of the record held by Michael Yardy and Murray Goodwin (385*).
Thanks to a fin start to the campaign, Haines already has more than 30 per cent of the runs he made in the whole of 2021 in the opening two rounds of the season.
Ben Compton (Kent)
An astonishing week for a man who might not have been in this Kent XI had Zak Crawley not opted to sit out the first game of the campaign.
Compton now has three centuries in as many innings for Kent this season, and came within a marginal lbw shout of carrying his bat through both knocks against Lancashire. He made 104 not out out of 260 first time around, and 115 out of 279 when Kent were asked to follow on, his being the 10th wicket to fall. He spent the entire match on the field of play.
Yes, his team ultimately lost heavily in this round, but Compton's work this season has been almost unprecedented in the county game.
An initial version of this article failed to include Compton in our XI, the sort of false shot which the batsman himself did not play during a quite remarkable week.
James Bracey (Gloucestershire)
Reduced to 84 for 4, still with a second innings deficit of 65, the England keeper-batter produced a fine repost to restore parity and set a formidable score against Yorkshire.
The hosts were heading for an innings defeat but Bracey (177) had other ideas, hitting his second century of the campaign, shepherding the middle and lower order through to the close on day three and beyond the fourth morning across nearly eight hours of batting.
Yorkshire would eventually put the hammer down and chase down the 211 runs needed, but without Bracey, their route to victory would have been all the simpler.
Harry Brook (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
David Bedingham (Durham)
It is a reflection of the joy batters had during round two that Bedingham's 191 only sees him sneak into this XI.
In the process of earning qualification for England, the South African registered his 12th first-class hundred in an efficient fashion, adding to the 1,029 he made in 2021.
Twenty fours, three sixes and a strike-rate approaching 75 was a mark of his intent to score quickly, scoring 71 more runs than fellow centurion Sean Dickson off just 37 more deliveries.
Harry Brook (Yorkshire)
Such has been Brook's white-ball rise, which included an England debut in the Caribbean, it is easy to overlook his first-class returns.
He started this game with a well-paced, punchy 101, the fifth time he's brought up three figures in first-class cricket.
Yorkshire still needed 100 to win in fewer than 28 overs when he returned to the crease in the fourth innings.
But Brook put down the accelerator, crushing 10 boundaries as part of an unbeaten 56 from 48 deliveries to secure victory with 65 balls to spare.
Timm van der Gugten (Harry Trump/Getty Images)
Timm van der Gugten (Glamorgan)
It was a real team performance that underpinned Glamorgan's win at Nottinghamshire, but it was arguable that the stand-out individual performance of the match came from the Dutch international.
Without Van der Gutgen's first innings 62 it is likely the Cardiff club would not have had a first-innings lead to take the into the second half of the game, as Glamorgan scored 131 for the final two wickets.
Four scalps on the third evening (4 for 60) set up a routine fourth-day chase, a return that included the wicket of Ben Duckett five short of his second century of the match.
His ability to find swing with the old ball proved pivotal, as Glamorgan chased down the 166 needed to produce the result of the season so far.
Craig Overton (Somerset)
Scrawled into a heap on the floor in despair, the sight of the Somerset seamer lamenting the leg bye that secured Sussex victory at Taunton was one of the images of the opening weeks of the new county season.
This was a monumental effort from the 28-year-old, who is nursing a shoulder issue and had been ill in the West Indies, on his return to domestic action.
He picked up Nick Browne, Tom Westley, Sam Cook, Matt Critchley, Adam Wheater and Shane Snater in both innings, as well as Adam Rossington in the first, to finish with his best first-class innings (7 for 57) and match figures (13 for 87).
Jamie Overton (Surrey)
On the same day brother Craig was recording his career-best figures (5 for 45), Jamie was leading Surrey to the result of the second round, an innings win over Hampshire at The Oval.
Overton was effective with balls new and old, helping reduced Hants to 52 for 4 in the 11th over of their first innings, before clearing up the tail as the lower-order looked like hanging around.
In the absence of Kemar Roach, the 28-year-old claimed three wickets including that of the in-form Joe Weatherley before Jordan Clark secured the victory inside three days.
Jamie Overton led Surrey to victory over Hampshire (Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images)
Matthew Potts (Durham)
Tipped as a player to watch by Steve Harmison, Potts claimed career-best figures (6 for 58) and a maiden five-for in the first Leicestershire innings to give Durham the platform to push for victory.
After putting on 61 for the eighth wicket with Ben Raine to help extend Durham's advantage he got rid of the stubborn Hassan Azad and then ripped through the middle order to give the hosts a handsome first-innings lead.
Unable to help bowling out the Running Foxes in the fourth innings - a common problem across the Championship - he still served notice of his talent just 20 matches into his senior red-ball career.
Matt Parkinson (Lancashire)
It has been refreshing to see spinners in amongst the wickets during the opening two rounds of the season, with Liam Patterson-White, Andrew Salter and Hamidullah Qadri all enjoying early success.
Leg-spinner Parkinson added himself to that list with seven wickets across both innings to help beat Kent at Canterbury.
As Ben Compton held firm, Parkinson was a menace for the rest of the line-up, dismissing the remainder of the top four including bamboozling Zak Crawley.
He returned in the second as Kent attempted to save the game, embarrassing Jordan Cox before getting rid of Darren Stevens and Matt Milnes.
Honourable mentions
In another round when 16 hundreds were scored, it was impossible to recognise them all.
Credit must therefore go to the likes of Steven Croft, Dane Vilas, Marcus Harris, Ollie Pope, Michael Jones and Wayne Madsen, whose three-figure scores go unrewarded.
Cheteshwar Pujara was the second India player to record a double century in the County Championship, following in the footsteps of Mohammad Azharuddin who struck two for Leicestershire in the 90s. He was in the runs for Sussex against Derbyshire.
Duckett was five short of repeating the achievement as Notts went down to Glamorgan and Sean Dickson deserves plenty of praise for filling Alex Lees' shoes with a first-innings century and 84 in the second as Durham pushed for a declaration against Leicestershire.
In what was another lean round for the bowlers, Hamidullah Qadri produced one of the stand-out displays with 6 for 129 - his best in first-class cricket - but it was not enough against Lancs.
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