Who are the players to watch? Who’s in the squad? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What is the fixture list? Your questions answered
Head coach: Jason Kerr
Captain: Tom Abell
Overseas players: Marchant de Lange
Players in:
Players out: Nathan Gilchrist (Kent), Jamie Overton (Surrey), Dom Bess (Yorkshire)
Fixture list: April 8 – Middlesex (a); April 15 – Gloucestershire (h); April 22 – Leicestershire (a); April 29 – Middlesex (h); May 6 – Hampshire (a); May 13 – Surrey (h); May 20 – Gloucestershire (a); June 3 – Hampshire (h); July 4 – Leicestershire (h); July 11 – Surrey (a)
Remind me what happened last year?
So close yet so far – all over again. No side has come closer to red-ball glory in the last decade without winning a title than Somerset. And so, after drawing with Essex in the Bob Willis Trophy final but losing their grip on the crown courtesy of a lower first innings score, Tom Abell’s men will come again this time around.
In Craig Overton, they had one of the competition’s standout players – 30 wickets at 13.43 apiece made him the leading fast bowler in the country. As a result, he spent part of his winter touring with England among the reserve party in Sri Lanka.
Josh Davey, often unheralded amid bigger names, claimed 24 scalps himself. So potent were Somerset’s seam attack – Lewis Gregory, Jack Brooks and Jamie Overton also nipped in with regular wickets – that no opposition team until the Lord’s final passed 200 in an innings. Indeed, local rivals Gloucestershire were rolled for 76 and 70 in the same game.
With the bat, nine hundreds were spread across six players, including three for Tom Lammonby and a pair for Abell. All told, Lammonby was the tournament’s breakout star: not only did he become the first England-qualified player to score three centuries in his first six first-class appearances since Graham Lloyd in 1989, but he came the youngest Somerset player to carry his bat, doing so in a winner-takes-all clash with Worcestershire.
Tom Lammonby is one of several exciting talents at Taunton
What’s happened over the winter?
For the first time in three decades, Marcus Trescothick is no more a Somerset employee: the legendary opening batsman has become England’s batting coach and so leaves the county where he holds icon status. He is not the only change among the coaching staff either, with Steve Kirby replacing Stuart Barnes as bowling coach.
New contracts have been handed to Davey, Lammonby, Max Waller, Lewis Goldsworthy, Jack Leach, Ned Leonard, Ollie Sale, Kasey Aldridge and Steve Davies, with the Taunton outfit keen to keep together a strong crop of homegrown players.
Off the field, Somerset received a special award from YouTube in February for becoming the first county cricket club and sports club in the south west to pass 100,000 subscribers on the platform. And while that might sound like an unusual, insignificant milestone, it represents fine reward for a terrific digital product – led by Ben Warren, the importance of which came to the fore in the trying circumstances of 2020.
Meanwhile, the club’s punishment for breaching ECB pitch regulations during their 2019 County Championship title-decider against Essex has been revised. The decision follows a request by the county and the ECB in light of the remodelling of English cricket’s red-ball competition for 2021.
Having initially been docked 24 points – with 12 of those suspended – after preparing a pitch that spun extravagantly from early on, that sanction has now been adjusted. Instead, Somerset will begin with an eight-point penalty in the group phase.
The deduction was initially handed down for 2020 but, given the shortened season and the decision to pause the County Championship in light of the coronavirus pandemic, the sanction was rolled over until 2021.
Who’s arrived and who’s left?
The exit of Jamie Overton to Surrey was announced during the shortened 2020 season, coming – frustratingly for Somerset – in amongst some of the finest form of his professional career: in four Bob Willis Trophy appearances, he took 15 wickets and scored 206 runs, including a maiden first-class century.
His departure, however, has been offset by the arrival of Marchant de Lange as an overseas player. The South African seamer, who had been at Glamorgan until the end of the 2020 campaign, bowls fast and hits a long ball – as like for like a replacement for Overton as the club could have expected to find.
Dom Bess has also moved on, as has been well publicised over the course of the winter. The off-spinner has joined Yorkshire in a deal that could have repercussions at Taunton. Leach’s fine performances in Sri Lanka and India mean that he will almost certainly begin the summer as England’s first-choice spinner. And with Bess no longer at their disposal, Somerset – having previously been spoilt for choice in that department – may well find themselves short of slow bowling options.
Who will be the key men in 2020?
Tom Abell: The club captain seems to improve year on year, last season making 386 runs in six red-ball games – a campaign that featured two of his seven first-class hundreds to date. Somerset will need that number to rise over the coming months.
A career average of 32.12 does a disservice to the talent of the 27-year-old, whose cause has not been helped by the challenging nature of the Taunton surfaces in recent times. As captain, his mettle will be tested this year, especially if Leach is absent for long periods of the second half of the four-day competition.
Tom Lammonby: One of the cricketers of 2020, he has still only faced 888 balls in his first-class career. No stage was too big for him last year, adding a century at Lord’s to hundreds at Taunton against Gloucestershire and another at Worcestershire.
A useful left-arm seamer to boot, the challenge facing the Devonian now is to back up his remarkable start with a solid second season.
Craig Overton: Even more important now in the absence of his twin brother, the allrounder was unplayable last season. If he can carry that form over into 2021, with eight successive rounds of County Championship cricket between April and June, he may well be knocking on England’s door for the two-Test series against New Zealand.
Joe Root’s men are hardly light on seam options, however, which could benefit Somerset’s silverware chances.
One to watch?
Will Smeed made his T20 bow for the county last year but is keen to stress his ambitions across multiple formats. He made 82 in just his second game as a first team cricketer against Gloucestershire and is highly regarded by all who have seen him play.
“I just like scoring runs,” he told The Cricketer. “Ultimately, batting is about scoring runs, so I have to do a much of that as I can. This winter, I’ve been working a lot on my red-ball stuff. I do want to do well in all three formats. I’m trying to give myself the best chance possible to score as many runs as I can.”
What can we expect from this team this season?
Clearing their eight-point deduction as soon as possible will be paramount, but otherwise it’s hard to envisage anything other than another title charge, with a quality seam attack backing up a strong spine.
Subscribe today and receive The Cricketer’s centenary issue – six issues for £19.21. Click here
OTHER TEAM GUIDES
Welcome to www.thecricketer.com - the online home of the world’s oldest cricket magazine. Breaking news, interviews, opinion and cricket goodness from every corner of our beautiful sport, from village green to national arena.