The curtain rises on the English County Cricket season, as always with the MCC taking on last year's winners, in this case, Lancashire.
MCC won the toss and, as they did last year, elected to bat first. In both of the previous games at Abu Dhabi the team batting first has gone on to win and I'm sure this will have been part of Ramprakash's thinking. However they only managed to survive 75 overs and a ball as Lancashire bowled them out for 265. Slightly surprisingly this is the second highest score in any innings amassed by an MCC side in Abu Dhabi. Before the close they also managed to pick up two wickets to leave the game in a fine balance, with Lancashire on 38.
Ian Blackwell was clearly the stand out player of they day. Batting at 6 for the MCC he was not out for 103, while no-one else made it past 33. He then picked up one of the two Lancashire wickets and ended the day with impressive figures of 1 for 4, from 3 overs.
For Lancashire Simon Kerrigan was the pick of the bowlers, taking 4 wickets at 3.6 runs an over.
Brown and Keedy will pick up play in the morning (UK time) and try to lift Lancashire into a position from which they can surpass the MCC's score.
Looking ahead to the weekend, six teams are taking on University sides in 1-day friendlies, however I wonder if the lack of 3-day friendlies will affect the opening round of County Championship games next week. We'll see!
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