Mason Crane picks up a wicket on the second bounce

Hampshire won the toss and elected to bat in the crucial County Division 1 match against Tom Abell’s Somerset at Taunton. Batting first Hampshire got off to the worst of starts with Liam Dawson and Michael Carberry getting dismissed with the score reading 34/2. It seemed that George Bailey took the wrong decision to bat first on a seaming track.

James Vince and Bailey got the team back on track with the skipper scoring 49 runs in 65 balls, before getting dismissed off a peach of a delivery from Jack Leach. Former South African pace bowler Kyle Abbott’s innings of 49 off 54 balls was essential to Hampshire’s total of 162. In his innings of 49, the bowler hit three boundaries and four sixes at a strike rate of 90.74.

In reply, the Somerset opener Marcus Trescothick got out to a swinging delivery from Kyle Abbott. Since then, the Somerset batsman played the swinging deliveries fairly well before Tom Abell was dismissed at 90/2. Somerset managed to score a total of 197 runs, with a slender lead of 35 runs over the opposition.

Hampshire finally got off to the start that they would have hoped for in the second innings, with Carberry and Dawson scoring 84 runs between them before the former was dismissed for a well-made 51 runs. Dominic Bess’s bowling got Hampshire reeling with the lead just over 150 when wickets started falling in pairs. They were reduced to 140/6 before Gareth Berg and Sean Ervine got off to a good partnership. Kyle Abbott’s contribution at the end of the innings too helped the side get a total of 293 runs

In the second innings, Somerset followed suit and got off to a good start before Liam Dawson picked up the wicket of the experienced Trescothick. Captain Tom Abell fell almost immediately after the departure of Trescothick before Mason Crane picked up the wicket of James Hildreth.

Mason Crane’s moment of embarrassment

Crane then went on to bowl a short-decker which pitched just ahead of the bowler’s crease and surprised the opener Dean Elgar, who was caught off-guard and got himself bowled out. This delivery is a rather embarrassing one for the bowler to a bowl and an even more embarrassing one for the batsman to get dismissed and that’ what happened exactly.

The delivery got the Somerset Twitter handle in the ruckus, and they responded to the dismissal with such shock. The handle tweeted “OUT: Would you believe it. Crane bowls a long-hop that yorks Elgar on the second bounce. He goes for 60 and Somerset are 118/6.”

Unbelievable pic.twitter.com/Bbz3nyZc9g

— Somerset Cricket ? (@SomersetCCC) May 28, 2017