Rikki Clarke bowled with masterful precision and subtlety from the Vauxhall Finish to assert career-best figures of seven for 55
Rikki Clarke claimed career-best figures of seven for 55 • Getty Photographs
Surrey 42 for 0 path Somerset 269 (Davies 86, Trescothick 65, Clarke 7-55) by 227 runs
As The Oval clock ticked over to five o’clock, Rikki Clarke raised the ball aloft and led Surrey off, saluting the house crowd as they lauded his career-best figures. It was a second that each the participant and spectators had lengthy thought would by no means come.
Many members at this hallowed floor have recollections of Clarke rising from Surrey’s academy, spotty however brimming with an effervescent expertise. His third County Championship match, 15 years in the past, introduced a chic 153 not out towards Somerset at Taunton. Add within the nonchalant catches within the slips and the tempo and bounce he generated from his 6ft 4in body, and Clarke was instantly marked out as a participant of supreme promise. It took solely 10 first-class matches for England to be persuaded to pick out him in a world squad.
Over the next years, the alluring prospect of Clarke offering England with runs, wickets and catches – as he did in two achieved Checks in Bangladesh in 2003 – gave strategy to frustration at why such a expertise was stagnating. And so Clarke left his house county in 2007, taking on the Derbyshire captaincy in an try and reinvigorate his profession. The transfer failed, spectacularly. By the summer season’s finish Clarke had given up the job after which stop the county for good. However then got here a transfer to Warwickshire, the place Clarke turned a cricketer of the calibre and consistency that those that had watched the promise of these early performances for Surrey anticipated, even when an England recall by no means fairly got here.
After a decade of trophies and fulfilment at Edgbaston, however this summer season’s struggles, Clarke returned house. First, he signed a two-year contract starting subsequent 12 months. Then, after Dominic Sibley moved to Warwickshire, the 2 have been concerned in a mid-season mortgage swap, and Clarke was thrust again into Surrey’s workforce.
He returned to discover a utterly new function. It was not merely that Clarke had aged. The place as soon as he was a wayward cricketer, now he was recruited to carry solidity. And whereas he had spent his first Surrey profession within the prime six, Clarke has returned to a spot of No.8, and even 9, which reasonably appears to belittle his 16 first-class centuries.
However whereas Clarke was away, he developed right into a extremely expert bowler, adept at slicing the ball from a clumsy top. The place he had as soon as sprayed the ball in pursuit of wickets, he returned with the persistence to find a probing line and size remorselessly.
Over 16 fulfilling seasons in skilled cricket, by no means have these qualities been as persuasive as in the present day. On a pitch on which Somerset had misplaced just one wicket within the morning session, and even that getting ready to lunch, Clarke jagged the ball spitefully each methods at a clumsy size.
The Oval isn’t the form of floor on which many bowlers produce a spell of 5 for 32 in ten overs, by no means thoughts doing so instantly after lunch on the primary day. However Clarke bowled with masterful precision and subtlety from the Vauxhall Finish, eliciting edges from George Bartlett and Edward Byrom with away motion in between finding in-swing to entice James Hildreth lbw, uprooting Tom Abell’s off stump after which, most emphatically of all, discovering a full size to Peter Trego. A rash drive ensued; it missed the ball, which as an alternative dismantled the off and center stumps. Remarkably, it was Clarke’s first Surrey five-fer.
Nor was he executed but. If a ten-over spell had revealed admirable sturdiness in a person who turns 36 by the top of the month, the impression was confirmed when, after tea, he plucked out Dom Bess’s drive in his followthrough after which produced a menacing spell of bouncers to Steven Davies as early night shadows prolonged onto the outfield, which finally culminated in Davies choosing out fantastic leg. In decimating Somerset’s prime order, Clarke had topped 400 first-class wickets, and 100 for Surrey, and encapsulated why he has been among the many Most worthy gamers within the shires within the final decade. On this proof, he may but stay so for a number of years to come back.
Not that Clarke was the one participant to take pleasure in being again at The Oval. Davies performed sumptuously on his first-class return, after his winter transfer to Taunton, marrying the finesse and fluency of his dreamy late cuts and drives with fortitude to resist Clarke, and stabilise Somerset from the particles of 138 for six. If their eventual 269 stays far under the latest norm at The Oval, the pitch provided Somerset’s seamers considerable motion throughout their 14 overs at Surrey. Somerset could but have a working complete.
The morning had introduced no indication of what Clarke would unleash. As an alternative, Marcus Trescothick unfurled all his emblems – the crunching drives, the cuts scythed between level and deep additional cowl, and the nonchalant pulls – reserving explicit wrath for Sam Curran. The unusually heat applause that greeted an opponents’ half-century mirrored the stead by which Trescothick is held within the shires and gratitude that, 14 years after pillaging 219 towards South Africa on this floor, he has signed as much as one other 12 months in county cricket.
Tim Wigmore is a contract journalist and creator of Second XI: Cricket in its Outposts
