Great White Hope

I've been away for a few days, recovering from an excess of one-day internationals (at least that's what it felt like) and visiting my family in Derbyshire. On the way up I took in the second and third days of Somerset's championship match with Derbyshire at Taunton.

Of course the match - in which Derbyshire became the second side in consecutive games to total more than 800 on one of the most moribund shirtfront wickets on the planet - ended in a tame draw, but there was plenty of interest going on, notably Cameron White's innings of 138 which was the major contributor to Somerset's first innings total of 501.

White's knock was interesting; for a player usually associated (both in south-west England and, increasingly, in his native Australia) with powerful strokeplay and fast scoring, it was a measured and technically secure knock, although he did send one pull out of the ground in the direction of the Brewhouse Theatre.

Having begun his career as one of Australia's many great white hopes to succeed Warne and MacGill as his country's foremost leg-spinner, he looked in this innings like someone who has accepted that his bowling has stagnated, fallen away, in fact, and who needs to regard himself as a batsman who can bowl a few (or a lot of) overs when required, but not someone who's ever going to be an international spinner or all-rounder.

In the Somerset side he's doing a pretty convincing impersonation of an assured and powerful number five. Whether it will ever be enough to give him a Test career is more doubtful, but, for the time being, everyone at Taunton should be happy to have him, whatever his role.

And, come Twenty20 time, hang on to your hats.