Why not enforce the follow-on?

It was a thrilling but frustrating end to the match in Antigua. I find it difficult to understand why captains often don’t enforce the follow-on. The beauty of the follow-on is that it gives the side enforcing it two chances to win, either by bowling out the batting side cheaply enough to win by an innings or by leaving a modest target to get in the fourth innings. The reason in this match was supposed to have to do with the England bowlers being tired, but surely pressing home the advantage of bowling out West Indies cheaply would have left England in more control. England would have been pressing for runs in the fourth innings instead of trying to winkle out the West Indies tail.

Hope springs eternal

T.S. Eliot famously described April as the cruellest month, but a new cricket season is surely always grounds for hope. Derbyshire opened the County Championship campaign at Bristol with a team showing significant changes from last year: there were I think four debutants against Gloucestershire. Derbyshire followers could nontheless be forgiven a sense of weary resignation on scanning the scorecard for the first innings of the match; a score of 124 all out suggests that the long-standing batting problems have not been entirely dissipated. The four debutants managed a combined total of 13 if I have counted correctly. The 124 was put into perspective by the Gloucestershire total of 314, and if the order of the innings had been reversed Rikki Clarke would probably have been asked to bat again in his first match as captain. The second innings was more encouraging however with 114 from Chris Rogers, who is apparently to feature prominently this season as Jayarwardene will not play at all.

To be optimistic, there is a long tradition of Derbyshire’s batsmen getting the side into trouble and the bowlers getting them out of it. Even in this match victory was not entirely out of the question: the hosts, 27 for 1 when rain had the final word, needed another 145 with nine wickets in hand.