da bet vitoria： Mike Denness, one of the England Cricket Board’s Pitch Liaison Officers,watched 13 wickets go down on the opening day of Lancashire’s penultimatechampionship match against Somerset at Old Trafford
Colin Evans08-Sep-2000Mike Denness, one of the England Cricket Board’s Pitch Liaison Officers,watched 13 wickets go down on the opening day of Lancashire’s penultimatechampionship match against Somerset at Old Trafford.Denness spoke to Lancashire’s head groundsman Peter Marron, umpires BobWhite and Peter Willey, and the captains, Warren Hegg and Jamie Cox, and OldTrafford officials will find out today (Sat) whether he intends to report thepitch for being poor.That could bring an eight points penalty for Lancashire, effectivelywrecking their slim hopes of staying in the title race. Denness has alreadybeen involved in eight point dockings for Derbyshire and Yorkshire recentlyand is likely to ask another member of the Pitch Advisory Board to accompanyhim at Old Trafford today.Somerset, put in by Lancashire’s acting skipper Hegg, collapsed to 132 allout in 49.4 overs with Cox, who hit a superb 53, the only one to dominate theseam attack of Glen Chapple (4-34) and Mike Smethurst (3-29). But Lancashirewill claim that it was good, swing bowling rather than a rogue pitch whichcaused the low scoring.In contrast Somerset’s seamers posed few problems for Mike Atherton andMark Chilton as they piled on 88. But then left-arm spinner Ian Blackwellgrabbed three quick wickets.However Atherton, playing his first innings since batting for 12 hours inthe Oval Test, carved out a careful half century in 175 minutes with fivefours and led Lancashire to 142-3.Two overs were lost when sun stopped play. At 5 50pm it was glaringdirectly into the eyes of Atherton and Graham Lloyd and they were forced totake a 10 minutes break until cloud cover arrived. It has happened before atOld Trafford where the square is laid east-west, twice in 1994 againstGloucester and Leicester and last season against Kent.