County Championship team of the week: Centuries aplenty in the fourth round of action

Each week The Cricketer picks a team of the round from the LV= Insurance County Championship

The Cricketer picks a standout XI from the third round of the LV= Insurance County Championship, and a handful of honourable mentions.

Matt Renshaw (Somerset)

There were higher scores from opening batters in the fourth round of the LV= Insurance County Championship but not many that set their team on the way to victory. And of those who did win, few needed a victory more than Matt Renshaw and Somerset.

The Australian's 129 set the tone for Somerset's first win in eight matches after seven consecutive defeats; after losing at Surrey, Jason Kerr stressed that he felt his team was close to turning things around, and a century from his overseas player – just the second made by a Somerset player in this season of big scores – finally gave the county's much-vaunted bowling attack the tools with which to work, winning by an innings.

Chris Dent (Gloucestershire)

One of the best openers in the country for the best part of a decade, the former Gloucestershire captain made his first century of the campaign – to sit alongside two fifties – as he became his county's fourth player to reach three figures in April alone.

For a batter so consistent over the years, it wasn't before time either: Dent, who gave up the captaincy at the back end of last season, hadn't made a first-class hundred since 2019, when he hit four. Without that two-year blip, he may well have been closer to the international reckoning by now. Not that there is any doubt about his talent; in the process of reaching his unbeaten 207, Dent passed 10,000 first-class runs. Plenty with smaller bodies of work have opened the batting for England.

Cheteshwar Pujara (Sussex)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Cheteshwar Pujara has proven a wise piece of business from Sussex, slotting into the middle order of a young side desperately in need of a regular flow of runs. In India's veteran No.3, they've found what they were looking for. This – 203 against Durham, a knock that set up a chance of victory that was ultimately extinguished by a fine riposte – was Pujara's third hundred of the summer in just five innings.

He is already more than halfway to 1,000 runs for the summer – for all the talk of Shan Masood and Ben Compton, don't rule out Pujara in the race to reach that milestone first. He was aided by a concussion to Chris Rushworth that ruled out Durham's best bowler, but how much assistance he'd have garnered on a pitch that on its final day produced a 313-run opening stand (between Alex Lees and Sean Dickson) is debatable.

^{Nick Gubbins made two centuries in Hampshire's draw with Lancashire (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)}

Nick Gubbins (Hampshire)

Ultimately, the weather starved Division One of a blockbuster final day at the Ageas Bowl, where both teams left out their leg-spinners on a pitch that – it was thought after day one – would become more difficult to bat on as the game wore on.

Instead, Hampshire piled on 344 in their second innings against an attack still possessing James Anderson and Hassan Ali, driven on by Nick Gubbins, who made twin centuries in the match (101 not out, 130): some effort in a game where there were counterattacking fifties from others lower down the respective orders but where no other top-five batter passed 33. Having left Middlesex for Hampshire midway through last summer, he's now averaging 44.21 for his new county.

Harry Brook (Yorkshire)

Narrowly edging out his teammate, Dawid Malan, by virtue purely of weight of runs (194 vs 152), Harry Brook is enjoying the perfect start to the season, with England once again on the lookout for options. Still only 23 years of age, it would be nice if the Yorkshireman were given the chance to hone his game in domestic cricket for another year before being thrust into the international arena, though his early-season form – 512 runs, averaging 170.6 – will certainly have raised the eyebrows of Rob Key.

His latest hundred – just six runs short of a double, having arrived at the crease with his side well under the cosh at 23 for 3 in the 22nd over – might well have led Yorkshire to victory over Kent, had it not been for poor light preventing the prospect of an enthralling, final-evening chase at Headingley.

Jamie Smith (Surrey)

If you looked at Surrey's scorecard, you could have been forgiven for assuming their high-scoring draw with Gloucestershire had taken place at The Oval, where such results have been commonplace in recent times. Instead, this was the product of three days at Bristol – the fourth was lost to rain – dominated by bat over ball, with Jamie Smith at its fore.

As for Brook, it wasn't all plain sailing; he was at the crease when Surrey were 37 for 3, having been invited to bat first, only he was still at the crease almost 150 overs later when the final wicket – of Reece Topley – was taken. In the process, there were records aplenty, including a new all-time-high for Surrey's eighth wicket: 244 between Smith and Jordan Clark, who made Surrey's highest-ever first-class score by a No.9.

^{Harry Brook fell six runs short of a double hundred (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)}

Brooke Guest (Derbyshire)

The wicketkeeper in this composite selection, the Derbyshire man – signed from Lancashire in 2020 – had the game of his career in a thriller at Derby. In the process, he trebled his tally of career centuries, doing so from No.3, which has allowed Wayne Madsen to park up at No.4. Madsen himself made a second-innings hundred for Derbyshire in a 276-run stand alongside Guest, setting up a declaration from which they nearly lost, such was Glamorgan's ambition – they were 310 for 8 in the 55th over when hands were finally shaken with the visitors just short.

For Guest, who made 109 and 138, it was a breakthrough performance following the enforced retirement of Harvey Hosein at the end of last season, becoming just the second Derbyshire wicketkeeper to achieve the feat of two hundreds in the same game.

Ed Barnard (Worcestershire)

The Worcestershire man began last April without a first-class hundred and a sense of lingering frustration that it was the missing piece of his game that would prevent him from being considered a proper allrounder in some quarters. So, churning out his maiden century against Essex lifted that weight from his shoulders. A year on, albeit in a losing cause, he was at it again in April; in a curious game played at times in fast-forward mode (Ben Duckett made 50 off 39 balls, Stuart Broad 45 off 27, Haseeb Hameed 53 off 56), Barnard came to the crease at 32 for 4 in the second innings, staring the possibility of an innings defeat in the face.

When Dillon Pennington was the last man out a day later, he was still unbeaten, left stranded on 163 – his coach, Alex Gidman, calling the innings "one of the finest I've seen". With Pennington tending to a niggle and Joe Leach also missing, Barnard was then called upon to open the bowling, cleaning up Hameed, having accounted for Joe Clarke and Lyndon James in the first innings.

Ben Mike (Leicestershire)

A remarkable all-round display from the Leicestershire man which, for 97 overs in Middlesex's innings, looked like it might never happen. For some reason, Mike was only called upon to bowl once Mark Stoneman had racked up an extremely watchable century that had cast Middlesex miles ahead in a game that had been theirs for the taking from the moment Leicestershire were bowled out for 149 on a blameless Lord's surface.

Mike, with the ECB speed guns in operation for the match, was belatedly introduced and picked up 4 for 15 in a quick spell that more than once touched 85mph, featuring the wickets of Toby Roland-Jones caught hooking, Luke Hollman beaten by a yorker and both John Simpson and Ethan Bamber edging healthily to slip.

Once he was done with the ball, Mike strode to the crease with Leicestershire 105 for 5 and – like Barnard – fearing the prospect of an innings defeat. He responded with a fine counterattack, pulling four sixes, driving powerfully, taking on Shaheen Shah Afridi and looking much like the game-changing allrounder that Paul Nixon has imagined in him. The only shame, having earlier missed out on a five-wicket haul, was that he ended unbeaten agonisingly on 99, with Beuran Hendricks shouldering arms to a straight ball from Toby Roland-Jones.

^{James Anderson and Stuart Broad were both in action for their counties (Warren Little/Getty Images)}

James Anderson (Lancashire)

In another week of big scores – in which there were 20 centuries across nine games – there were few standout displays with the ball. There were five-wicket hauls for Keith Barker, Suranga Lakmal, Steven Patterson, Olly Hannon-Dalby, Haris Rauf and Liam Trevaskis, but none of those ended in victory. Nor, of course, did James Anderson's efforts for Lancashire at the Ageas Bowl.

But his match figures – 6 for 60 in 37 overs – represented a fine effort on a competitive pitch that would almost certainly have produced a result had it not been for Sunday's weather.

Dane Paterson (Nottinghamshire)

The leading bowler of the week, who completed a 10-wicket match when he claimed the final wicket of Worcestershire's second innings. The story of the game at Trent Bridge was meant to be the return of Stuart Broad to competitive action, only for the England seamer to be upstaged by his South African counterpart, who claimed the extraordinary figures of 8 for 52 – the best in the County Championship so far this summer.

Honourable mentions: Marnus Labuschagne, Mark Stoneman, Dawid Malan, Luke Procter, Wayne Madsen, Keith Barker, Jordan Clark, Sean Dickson, Alex Lees