CW Legend makes his CC debut.

Yesterday's games continued, whilst a further one started, but rain disrupted the play.

At Guildford, Warwickshire powered on past 500 yet again, Dougie Brown becoming the third centurion of the innings and Brad Hogg dismantling the bowling on his way to 67 from only 41 balls, although young seamer Phil Sampson managed to take a further 2 wickets to end with his first 5 wicket haul in First Class Cricket.

The final total of 537 left Surrey an uphill struggle to avoid the follow on, and although several players made starts, and runs were flowing pretty freely, the Warwickshire attack stuck to their task, and only Mark Ramprakash's unbeaten 138 held the side from a meagre score.

Surrey will go into day 3 still needing 81 to avoid following on, and with the last pair at the wicket, that prospect is unlikely.

Warwickshire 537
(Bell 155, Powell 110, Brown 106, Hogg 67, Sampson 5-121, Doshi 3-101)
Surrey 307-9
(Ramprakash 138*, Tahir 3-63)



Rain was more prevalent in Cheltenham, but James Franklin carried on where he left off on Wednesday by removing the last two Lancashire wickets to finish with career best figures.

In reply Gloucestershire lost 2 early wickets, as we witnessed the strange sight of Peter Martin opening the bowling, taking the key wicket of Michael Hussey and the being replaced by the released England player James Anderson.

Anderson then proceeded to remove top scorer Phil Weston whilst Dominic Cork bowled superbly at the other end to pick up 2 quick wickets and reduce the home side to 99-5 before Franklin and wicketkeeper Steve Adshead lead a small fightback. Franklin edged one through to the keeper in the moments of the day though to leave another home side in dire danger of having to follow on.

Lancashire 375
(Mongia 111, Loye 90, Chilton 69, Franklin 7-60)
Gloucestershire 186-6
(Weston 44, Adshead 35*, Franklin 34, Cork 2-19)



Finally, the day started in a strange fashion at New Road, where visitors Middlesex were denied the chance to unleash Glenn McGrath on his former side by his Australian employers.

Undeterred by this, Ben Hutton decided to forego the chance of sitting in a nice warm dressing room and watching their county colleague continue to prosper for England, and sent the home side into bat.

Even without McGrath, Middlesex were still able to sport an International super-star opening bowler in the form of Ajit Agarkar, but it was another recent import in Melvyn Betts who did the damage to the top order, taking 3 of the first 4 wickets to fall, and the crucial catch to remove Graeme Hick as the home side tumbled to 78-4.

Andy Bichel helped Vikram Solanki add 49 for the 5th wicket before Agarkar removed him, and when Betts returned to trap Gareth Batty leg before wicket, the home side were in danger of collapse at 147-6.

As often happens though, an overseas import came to the rescue, South African Andrew Hall firing 9 fours in his unbeaten knock of 63 that along with Solanki's slightly more sedate innings (albeit one that has contained 14 fours thus far) led them to a much more competitive score when rain had the final say for the day.

Worcestershire 263-6
(Solanki 82*, Hall 63*, Betts 4-64)

Posted by Marc