Ned’s at it again but Cosgrove’s boys miss out
Northamptonshire 397-7d & 118-1 drew with Leicestershire 519 & 292-6d
LEICESTERSHIREremain Essex’s nearest challengers at the top of the Division Two table, although they lost ground on the leaders after being held by Northamptonshire, the fifth stalemate in six Championship fixtures at Wantage Road this season.
Alex Wakely’s declaration 122 runs adrift on first innings gave Leicestershire the opportunity to force a positive result, but after Clint McKay hobbled off on the third afternoon, Mark Cosgrove opted against setting up a final-day run chase.
Essex’s innings victory at Derbyshire saw them pull 23 points clear of the Foxes ahead of what promises to be a decisive clash between the two sides at Grace Road next week.
Cosgrove is looking to lead Leicestershire into the top flight after a 13-year absence, but with only one promotion place available he knows a win is required to pull Essex back into the pack.
“Losing Clint McKay on day three really hurt us moving the game forward, left us with not many options as a bowling unit,” he said. “So we’ll take the draw, but we’ve put ourselves in a fantastic position sitting second in the table.
“It’s going to be a top-of-thetable clash, which is exciting.We’ve got ourselves into this position through hard work – a bit of last year and definitely this year we’ve improved the way we’ve played our cricket.
“We’ve got ourselves into a position to play a play-off for promotion, one versus two, if we can get that win it really pegs them back to the group and puts us within one or two points.”
After Cosgrove and Mark Pettini had struck opening-day centuries, Ned Eckersley became only the third Leicestershire batsman to score three consecutive first-class hundreds, following his two centuries against Derbyshire last week with 107.
Remarkably, all three of Eckersley’s hundreds have been scored from the number seven position, as he followed Stewie Dempster back in the 1930s and Ben Smith in 2001, taking Leicestershire beyond 500 for the first time since September 2014.
“He’s fantastic. He had to fight his way back into the team but since he’s been in the team he’s scored a 92, double hundreds last week and the hundred this week,” Cosgrove said of Eckersley. “He really is taking his chance and basically [we] can’t get him out of the team which is fantastic, he’s a class act.”
Leicestershire looked like they might be able to push for victory as Northants slipped to 184-5 in reply, but Rob Newton dug the hosts out trouble. The opener hit an unbeaten 202, his maiden double century before Wakely’s declaration, which was an attempt to set up a game that proved in vain as the visitors batted on, only pulling out when 404 runs ahead with 51 overs remaining.
The Championship has taken a back seat at Wantage Road this season in comparison to Northants’ white-ball exploits, but having recorded a first win of the season at Glamorgan last time out, head coach David Ripley was determined to see his side produce another competitive performance.
“Off the back of the last game, we wanted to break the cycle of good performance, rubbish performance. We won at Glamorgan and this is a creditable draw,” he said.“[I’m] Really pleased for Rob, we were under the pump and someone had to come out and play that role and he did it.
“It’s a bugbear of mine; we get criticism for our perceived apathy towards four-day cricket but we’ve a lot of desire to perform well, it was important we fronted up and we’ve done that.”