The Cricketer reflects on events on and off the field during the first round of LV= Insurance County Championship action...
Barker's brilliance
You're a batsman in the LV= Insurance County Championship. You've not had a hit in the middle, competitively, for months. Your team is struggling on day one of the new campaign and it's your job to add some stability. It's early in your innings. The ball pitches two foot outside off stump from the seamer. Leave it alone and onto the next.
Oh. Wait.
Steven Davies has been around a long time, but all that experience counted for nothing when Keith Barker delivered the first viral delivery of the summer at the Ageas Bowl. Barker, bowling his 'left-arm, tricky' over the wicket, extracted massive seam movement, the ball jagging back at an angle very close to sideways to knock over Davies' off stump. The batsman's shrug said it all.
If you've not seen it, you evidently spend very little time on social media. Here you go...
That is ridiculous.pic.twitter.com/McvACnVGi5
— The Cricketer (@TheCricketerMag) April 7, 2022
Season's firsts
Okay folks, notebooks out. Here is the crucial cribsheet for the end-of-term quiz.
First boundary: Mark Stoneman for Middlesex against Derbyshire.
First six: Surrey's talented young opener Ryan Patel at Edgbaston.
First wicket: Andrew Salter, bowled by a corker from Durham's Matty Potts at Sophia Gardens.
First hundred: Middlesex's Stephen Eskinazi doing his thing at Lord's.
Matty Potts took the first wicket of the season [Dan Mullan/Getty Images]
Kent's kit trouble
If there was ever a day not to be without your favourite threads, it was during the first session of the opening round of the County Championship.
It was a blustery morning at Chelmsford, with rain in the air, fielders with hands in pockets and many brave supporters wrapped up in attendance.
Kent captain Ollie Robinson won the toss and chose to bowl in favourable conditions, but meant his team were immediately exposed to the elements.
The prospect of having to bowl to Alastair Cook and Nick Browne - who would both reach centuries and put on 220 for the first wicket on day one - was made even more daunting by the lack of sufficient protection from the inclement weather.
A delay in the delivery of Kent's cable knit jumpers meant players were forced to resort to slipovers that mirror the design of the playing shirt as a short-term solution.
Manufacturers Castore, who provided the alternative arrangement free of charge, had been unable to provide the jumpers, which mirror the design from the 1970s when Kent won three County Championship titles, because of the closure of a factory in China due to Covid-19.
The Manchester-based firm, who also dress England's teams and have worked with the likes of Andy Murray and the McLaren Formula One team, signed a multi-year contract with the Canterbury club for the 2022 season and beyond.
It was a chilly opening day at Essex and unfortunately, Kent did not have any cable knit jumpers [Adrian Dennis/Getty Images]
Injury round-up
A few issues for clubs around the network to consider after round one.
Joe Denly pulled up in the field with a hamstring problem for Kent, which continues to be assessed. There is no concrete information coming out of the club about his situation but Kent will be desperate not to lose a key player for any length of time.
Ryan Sidebottom had barely got in the door at Derbyshire before sustaining an injury on day one against Middlesex.
Davies defied
Alex Davies was reduced to the most fleeting of appearances on his first outing as a Warwickshire player.
Davies, who signed from Lancashire at the end of last season, came on to the pitch as a sub-fielder on the second morning of the County Championship match against Surrey at Edgbaston.
But he was almost immediately ushered off the pitch by the umpires who pointed out that, as a suspended player, he was not eligible to take any part in the match.
Davies was banned for five games – four of them suspended – in February as a result of social media posts he published as a teenager which were, in the views of the ECB's Cricket Discipline Commission, "in clear breach of the ECB's anti-discrimination policy".
He is set to make his Warwickshire debut as a specialist batter, almost certainly at the top of the order, when Warwickshire play their second Championship game of the season. It starts on April 21 at Edgbaston.
Oliver Hannon-Dalby's blockathon
Warwickshire bowler Oliver Hannon-Dalby has cheekily offered himself up for England selection after completing a mammoth 'blockathon' during his side's County Championship opener against Surrey.
The 29-year-old took 66 balls and 94 minutes to get off the mark – an effort which is believed to be a county record – and remained in the middle for another 40 minutes before finishing the first innings not out on 11 from 89 deliveries and with a strike rate of 12.35.
His tenth-wicket partnership with Michael Burgess yielded 122 runs as Warwickshire closed on 531 and the wicketkeeper benefitted from his partner's steady hand to post a career-best first-class knock of 178.
Hannon-Dalby's marathon effort also ensured Warwickshire only had to make a brief return to the field on Sunday afternoon before handshakes were offered for a draw around 5pm.
@root66 Available if you need me pal!!
— Oliver Hannon-Dalby (@OHD_20) April 10, 2022
🦁👍🏻🦁👍🏻🦁 https://t.co/Vlstf2hc9m
A summer winter sport
Cricket's status as a summer sport was called into question at Sophia Gardens, with piles of snow present on the outfield during Glamorgan's Division Two clash with Durham.
The groundstaff in Cardiff were also forced to do battle with rain storms and heavy hail and resorted to scraping ice off the field with the bucket of a tractor on Friday afternoon before eventually giving in to Mother Nature.
The scenes in South Wales were reminiscent of those witnessed last season, when matches across the country were paused for snow at various points across April and May, and the age-old debate about scheduling and the continued lengthening of the county season cannot be summed up any better than by The Cricketer's own George Dobell…
"In a perfect world, the County Championship season wouldn't start on April 7. And, in a perfect world, it wouldn’t finish to the strains of the boys from the NYPD choir singing Galway Bay."
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