Durant Cricket Championship Final 2024 - Day One Review

Johnny Connell and Josh Lincoln rescued Berkshire with a brilliant seventh wicket partnership on a compelling first day of the Durant Cricket National Counties Championship final against Staffordshire at West Bromwich Dartmouth.

The pair lifted Berkshire, the Western Division champions, from 164 for six to 382 all out with a destructive stand of 171 in just 29 overs.

Connell followed up a century for the NCCA Challengers against Zimbabwe A on the same ground last month with a Championship-best 142 with Lincoln making his maiden century from just 85 balls.

Lincoln was not even in Berkshire’s side until the luckless Rhodri Lewis dislocated a shoulder fielding in a club match on Saturday, but he made the most of his unexpected opportunity to plunder 124 from 98 balls in his first Championship innings of the season and his first in any cricket for Berkshire in almost four months.

Lincoln struck six sixes – one of them onto the adjoining golf course, and 15 fours in a dominant innings and was trying to clear the ropes for the seventh time when he was taken by Liam Hurt, running across from long-on, just inside the boundary in front of the sightscreen.

Connell, who was awarded his county cap before the start of play, was happy to play a supporting role in the partnership but his second century for Berkshire was of immense value as it nursed them through a difficult first session after they had been put in by Staffordshire captain James Kettleborough.

They had lost four wickets by lunch with Kettleborough holding a sharp catch at first slip to account for Rhys Lewis off Sam Atkinson before Tom Moulton bowled Euan Woods and had Charlie Dunnett LBW in successive overs.

Kettleborough pouched a second catch off Tom Brett to get rid of his opposite number, Dan Lincoln, for a 15-ball duck but Staffordshire just could not dislodge Connell who batted with great composure and commonsense.

When Dan O’Driscoll went LBW sweeping a full-length ball from Brett soon after lunch, Berkshire were wobbling at 109 for five but Matt Dalrymple decided that attack was the best form of defence in his first Championship innings.

The left-hander, who plays National One rugby for Blackheath, struck seven fours in his pugnacious 38-ball 41 which dominated a sixth wicket partnership of 55 with Connell.

Dalrymple departed when he clipped off-spinner Oliver Tucker to midwicket but Josh Lincoln took up where he left off by playing the sort of spectacular innings normally associated with his elder brother.

Connell was ninth man out when he was caught behind chasing a widish legside delivery from Liam Hurt having faced 259 balls and struck 16 fours and two sixes, one of them into the busy traffic on the Birmingham Road.

Brett, who was also capped before the start of play, then had last man Luke Beaven stumped to take his fourth wicket of the innings and 30th of the season but on this occasion he was made to work very had for his victims by Connell and Lincoln.

Staffordshire lost opening batter Matt Morris with a dislocated shoulder sustained as he dived full length during the morning session and then lost Moulton who was ordered out of the attack by the umpires after he had bowled two above waist-high full tosses.

Morris’s injury prevented him from taking his usual place at the top of Staffordshire’s order so Moulton, who has been in fine fettle recently, was pressed into service as a stand-in opener.

Moulton had an escape on one when Beaven was unable to hold on to a difficult one-handed catch at cover off Tommy Sturgess while Kettleborough, who is enduring a lean spell with the bat, took 19 balls to get off the mark.

Only six overs were possible at the start of Staffordshire’s first innings before the umpires decided that the light had deteriorated from murky to unplayable.

Durant Cricket National Counties Championship Final

First Day of Four

West Bromwich Dartmouth: Berkshire 382 (Johnny Connell 142, Josh Lincoln 124, Tom Brett 4-92), Staffordshire 9-0.