Essex 400 for 9 (Middlebrook 115, Caddick 6-80) and 52 for 2 lead Somerset 339 (Cox 86) by 113 runs
ScorecardThe view from the old pavilion at Taunton – proudly misspelled as “The Old Pavillion” (with two Ls) on a new banner – is one of the county circuit’s lovelier vistas. When the air is clear, as it was this glorious afternoon, the Quantock Hills seem to lie in Arlottesque splendour just yards behind the (new) pavilion.Somerset have recently announced a £20million plan to redevelop the ground, but when the cricket on offer is as compelling as this, with the initiative batted back and forth, you wouldn’t complain if you sat on a broken bench with a backdrop of slagheaps and motorway flyovers.For the second day on the trot it was the unfashionable that shone. And that was just as well for Essex, since the celebrities are thin on the ground in the bowling department just now. Darren Gough, after just 88 overs for Essex (two Championship games and two one-day games) is being rested and Danish Kaneria, on the celebrity B-list after picking up bucketloads of Test wickets for Pakistan against Bangladesh, has a sore finger. Essex’s other overseas player, Scott Brant, was off-colour, so it was down to Andy Clarke, who a couple of seasons ago was playing most of his cricket for Hutton CC in Essex’s Shepherd Neame League.In a mature post-lunch spell he showed great control to return figures of 2 for 29 from 12 overs, bowled off the reel. He consistently beat the bat of Jamie Cox, the one Somerset batsman who really dug in. Cox’s gritty 86, made largely under the morning’s louring grey clouds, kept Somerset in a match they seemed to be crashing out of at 147 for 5. Things got worse as the lower-middle order chucked away promising starts. And when Cox at last fell, Somerset had sagged to a sorry 198 for 8 – still 53 from escaping the follow-on.But yesterday, Essex had recovered from an unhealthy 210 for 6, and now there was another Lazarus-like recuperation. The sun was smiling, and the home bowlers decided to have fun with the bat. Over the next 16 overs, the three Somerset Test players – batting nine, ten and jack – produced the most joyous cricket of the match so far.This is what Championship fare should be like: Richard Johnson seemed to middle everything, even conjuring two glorious Caribbean swivel-pulls. His carefree fifty came off only 34 balls, and when he went, two balls later, he had larruped 58, with four huge sixes and six fours. Twenty-two came from one Adrian McCoubrey over – though Clarke might have held on to a skyer as the boundaries rained from Johnson’s bat.Andrew Caddick put aside his inhibitions too, and with full-blooded assistance from Nixon McLean – sixes clattered into the sightscreens at either end – those last 16 overs of the Somerset innings tossed in a cracking 141. Far from following on, they cut Essex’s lead to 61: useful, but not dominant.McLean then produced a couple of beauties to sweep away the Essex openers on an evening suffused with golden light, and with the lead extended to 113, this match remains intriguingly poised. It could go all the way. Let’s hope it does.Hugh Chevallier is deputy editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.