Marcus

Get up. Leave your chair, or your bed. Go outside. If you are in England, even in the balmy south-west, you will see signs of autumn. It may be mild, but the leaves are turning; it may be quiet, but, if you are very lucky now, you may just hear the last of the northern summer's swallows, swifts and housemartins as they ready themselves to fly south. Come Newlands in January, when England are playing, this is where they will be.

There may be a slight chill in the air; a chill that may be real, or metaphorical. For cricket followers at this time of year there is always a chill. For this is where cricketers' dreams die and where players' careers end.

Marcus Trescothick's career ended here.

1991. Trescothick, 15 years old, beaming rosy-cheeked from the pages of The Cricketer. A new Slazenger bat is his, a reward for scoring 4000 runs in the season. He is flanked by Angus Fraser and Carl Hooper and Micky Stewart. The runs are extraordinary, but nobody knows if they will ever hear of him again. Young cricketers do exceptional things all the time, and frequently they fade into obscurity. Sometimes they come back, often they don't.

1994. Bath, June; a hot summer Saturday at the old festival ground, now sadly lost to the county game. Ringed in deckchairs and marquees, teeming with people, Bath Abbey gazing down like a sentinel. England are playing New Zealand at Lord's and they are struggling. The sound of TMS drifts across the ground from one of the beer tents, but it is only of marginal interest. For the many devout supporters of Somerset who are there, the fact that the Wyvern county is in the ascendant against Surrey is of much greater significance. What is more, young players are thriving. A slight and shy boy from north Devon called Mark Lathwell has already made a double hundred with timing that is a thing of beauty and art. It is art that is coincidental, in that he doesn't seem to realize how he is doing it, and nor do you, or anyone else. He has already played for England, and, despite a hesitant start to his Test career, he looks certain to go far in the professional game. Ultimately, though, his Test career has already finished, and he only goes far away from the professional game. This is what can happen.

Then there is Marcus. He may also be shy, but he is far from slight. In essence he is still a bulky boy on the edge of manhood at 18, and he is just starting to find his feet as an adult cricketer. On that day you see him make his maiden century in first-class cricket with the same ripe combination of drives, cuts and pulls as you will see so many times in the future. Of course, you have no idea of the bumps that there will be in the road, and nor does he. Nobody ever knows what the future holds, especially where cricket, and the harsh pressure that it can exert on all kinds of personalities, is concerned.

After that, for seasons, things stall. Time after time Marcus's innings consist of some early boundaries followed by dismissal to a catch behind the wicket. There are glimpses of the latent potential: there is a time when you go to Taunton and people are talking about the fact that he has made 322 in a second team game, but there is another time when you are sitting in the old Ridley Stand and Marcus is behind you with his Dad, discussing his future, which still seems uncertain. When you do see him play he is often batting down the order and bowling a little. It seems wrong. But this is the thing with cricket; over an extended period, scores don't lie. You are where you are, until you find yourself somewhere else.

For Marcus, the somewhere else was the England team, and you can still recall watching his first international innings on TV, willing him to succeed. He does, but you also recall telling someone that you feel that Test cricket, with all those fielders behind the wicket, might be a step too far.

Then you are at Taunton on the day when he bats in Test cricket for the first time. Yorkshire's Darren Lehmann is making one of the best half-centuries you have ever seen, or will ever see, but you are, of course, listening to what is happening in Manchester. What is happening in Manchester is that Marcus is batting against the West Indies - the West Indies of Ambrose and Walsh - and he is taking 45 minutes to make his first run. But he goes on to reach 50, and everyone is talking about how cool his temperament is and how well-suited he is to Test cricket.

This is true, and it remains true for years, until Marcus has to return home from India in early 2006, for reasons which everyone knows about now. He plays on for England until the end of the following summer, and you are lucky enough to be at Lord's to see what turns out to be his final Test century, even though you don't know it at the time and nobody else does either.

After this, the second half of his career begins.

The County Championship hasn't yet been condemned to dwell like a neglected orphan in the season's colder and darker months, and Marcus can be found where he is happiest, doing what he does best; close to home and batting at the top of the order for Somerset.

Here is where your impressions of Marcus crystallize into lasting memories, and now, with his time at an end, they flow like the runs used to in the times before his form started to fall away.

The first thought is of a stroke. From around 1999 to 2009 I nearly always sat in the Ian Botham Stand at Taunton, and I saw this stroke many times. Usually at the start of an innings, played against the hard new ball, often in fading light, late in the day, when thoughts turn to home. It is a stroke which usually indicated that Marcus was in form, and that big runs would follow.

The bowler would overpitch around middle and off and Marcus would drive just to the off side of straight. Without much foot movement, of course, but with the straightest of bats and that distinctive little flourish at the top of the stroke which was the nearest he ever got to a trademark. And, when he was really in nick, it would always go inside mid-off, too fast and true for anyone to touch.

There are other vignettes too. There was a time when a decent county seamer, who we'll call James Tomlinson, got a few people out at Taunton and started to fancy himself a little. He dropped one short at Marcus, and the ball was last seen bouncing across the car park and heading in the direction of Priory Bridge Road. Marcus was never the arrogant type, but you don't get to be good enough to play for England if you don't believe in yourself. He didn't need to tell James Tomlinson that he'd faced Brett Lee at Perth in 2002 and so knew what really fast bowling was like. All he had to do was hit the ball out of the ground.

In the years after he left international cricket nobody in Somerset forgot what Marcus could do. We knew it all along and we were reminded of it time and time again. Perhaps others forgot, though. So there were times when he reminded them. The time when he took Surrey for 124 at the Oval in a forty over game, or the time he was applauded off Castle Park in Colchester by Essex supporters who knew that they had seen an innings of majesty.

These years, late in the century's first decade, may have been the apogee of Trescothick's career. If his health had allowed it, he would still have been young enough and good enough to play for England, but he was forced by circumstances to tread the county game's boards instead. To many this would have seemed a much more prosaic existence, but you suspect that to Marcus it never did. He was a child of the county game in ways that players from counties where cricket means less, or who leave it behind for international cricket earlier, never were.

When he and Sir Alastair Cook briefly embraced at the end of their counties' final game of the season, it marked not just the passing of a player's career but the gradual ebbing away of an element of English cricket culture. These were two players, born on the same day nine years apart, whose international careers briefly intersected, and both of them know that their personal histories might have been very different if certain things beyond anyone's control hadn't happened. They also know and understand what it is like to exchange fame and fortune for a more moderate sort of heroism at Chelmsford or Taunton, instead of the Gabba or the Oval, whether you have any choice over the timing of your departure or not.

How many players in the future will get so much professional satisfaction, so much pleasure, from simply playing four day county cricket, long after, for them, the bright lights of the international game have been extinguished? The never-ending world of bastardised cricket will claim most of them before they even have the chance to see what they might become, let alone sink back into the life they used to know before they hit the big time.

And now, as county cricket as we know and love it enters another phase of threat and uncertainty - not that it ever left the last one, or the one before that, behind - memories of Marcus and times like these are what we are left with. And, whatever exists when the pieces thrown into the air and scattered to the winds by The Hundred land, these are what we will always have.

Cherish them for as long as you can.

The Tension of Expectation

It is a sunny afternoon at the County Ground in Taunton, and the April sky is a crystal shade of blue.

Away from the breeze it feels moderately warm. Jackets and jumpers are shed and the atmosphere feels somnolent as the Somerset openers begin their reply to Yorkshire's first innings total of 450.

However, though the crowd is quiet as lunchtime fades into mid-afternoon on the game's second day, the cricket is compelling. The Somerset openers represent both ends of the professional batsmen's spectrum: one is Chris Jones, 23 years old and with a century against Australia but little else to show for his nascent career. He needs time at the wicket, and runs, to begin the journey from promising youngster to seasoned batsman, and to justify the faith of himself and others. His partner is Marcus Trescothick. He is 38 and has been around the professional game since his partner was in short trousers. He also needs time at the wicket, and runs, to prove to others - and, though you should whisper it, to himself - that he can still perform as he used to. There is expectation, but there is also uncertainty and unspoken tension. This could go either way.

In the first over of the innings, bowled by Ryan Sidebottom, Trescothick eases away two boundaries. The second is an on drive which leaves the mid-on fielder scrambling fruitlessly for balance. I always used to say (still do, in fact) that you always knew when Marcus was playing well as he would usually get an off drive away early between the bowler and mid-off and that the timing and pace would, if his touch was right, always beat the fielder. This is that in mirror image. The ball is full and covers middle and leg, so Trescothick uses just a bit more left hand to guide it wide of the fielder, who has no chance of stopping it.

The fours are applauded, of course, but the crowd is barely more animated. There is suppressed recognition that Marcus looks good. Perhaps better than he looked in the whole of the 2013 season, which was his worst since before he became an England player. The tension of concern gives way to the tension of expectation, and of hope. These people have watched Marcus since he was the same age as Jones, and younger, they have known his triumphs and his setbacks, both on the field and off it. They are desperate for him to succeed.

Jones looks solid and fluent too, but his innings doesn't carry the same level of importance to others. For him there will, at whatever level of the game he finds himself, be many more opportunities. Trescothick doesn't have the same sort of time on his side.

In the sixth over Trescothick drives Sidebottom's partner Jack Brooks through the covers. He doesn't quite time it to perfection, and the bat turns slightly in his hands, but the ball easily runs to the boundary. Trescothick's call is loud and decisive. You can tell from its volume and tone that he feels as though he's starting to see it well. Expectation levels are raised again.

In the eleventh Sidebottom again strays towards the leg-side and Trescothick glances him to fine-leg for four. The stroke is wristier than is common from Trescothick, and so the ball travels finer. This is good.

The tension eases, slightly.

The very next ball, though, it is over. The delivery is full, and Trescothick plays over it. His stumps are broken.

It's one of the old truisms of batting that being dismissed is like dying. It can happen slowly, or it can happen suddenly, but it can happen at any time. The only advantage to batting is that after each death you can return for another go.

As you get older, though, it gets harder. More doubts enter minds, more questions are asked. One of the central ones, sometimes unspoken, sometimes not, is the question of when a poor run of form becomes a terminal decline. This is the question which hangs over every innings Trescothick plays now.

Last Monday there were hints, just hints, of old glories.

Tomorrow, far to the north in County Durham, it all begins again.

Footwork is for Mortals

One of the best things (and there are many to choose from) about Virender Sehwag is that watching him can make you re-consider all that you ever knew about batting. For example, every coaching manual you'll ever read will emphasize the importance of footwork in batting, but is it really that important? Not for Viru.

Sehwag has often shown (and yesterday was surely his apogee) that all he needs is a bowler and a bat. Some of the greatest hand-eye co-ordination and bat speed ever known will do the rest, coupled with under-rated shot selection and defence, insatiable run-hunger and a sprinkling of luck.

In a marginally less astonishing way it's worked for others too. Some very similar qualities have always stood Marcus Trescothick in good stead, and there are others. Sadly I never saw him in the flesh but all the footage of Graeme Pollock I've ever seen gives the impression of someone who'd just stand there and hit the cover off the ball until the bowlers couldn't take any more.

As with all kinds of aspects of all kinds of games, the Greats make their own rules.

Every Cloud?

I've often written about how closely I've followed Marcus Trescothick's career.

I saw his maiden century at Bath in 1994 and I've seen him make thousands of runs for Somerset since, along with a good few for England.

Like everyone with any heart at all I was saddened, but hardly all that surprised, by the news last night that he was returning early from India.

But I can't help thinking that there might be one good side to it all.

Next time the England batting is failing and everyone is saying Mark Ramprakash should be recalled, perhaps no-one will suggest that England should try to tempt Marcus out of retirement.

For the last time. It will never happen. Leave him to the county circuit where he can do what he's good at for many more years.

No Coming Back

Amid the media-led clamour for the selection of Mark Ramprakash last week, more than a few voices were heard to suggest the name of another player whose international career ended a while ago, this time by his own choice.

For too many people the fact that Marcus Trescothick retired from international cricket for mental health reasons seems to be irrelevant and the reasoning seems to be that if he can still do it for Somerset (and boy can he), he should be able to step up to Test cricket without a backward glance.

Although his illness showed itself at its worst during tours abroad, there's no guarantee that he would be able to cope with the heightened pressure of home Test cricket either, especially after three years out. Like Ramprakash he might want to, but he wasn't - and isn't - ever coming back.

What England are missing was underlined by his batting at Twenty20 finals day on Saturday. Two displays of dismissive power which few modern English players could have matched, three or four more overs of which in the Final would surely have brought his team the title.

It was also great to hear him talk with feeling about how he felt standing in the Long Room on the first day of the Lord's Test, although you suspect that it's truly impossible for anyone to get close to knowing what it's like to have been there before, to know that you're good enough to still be there, but be unable to do anything about it.

Those of us lucky enough to be able to get to Taunton regularly will just have to settle for watching him lay waste to county attacks on Somerset's behalf, hopefully for many years to come.

See you on Gimblett's Hill later in the week.

The County Game

Over the years, although I've watched a lot of it, I've often been ambivalent about the value, if not the intrinsic qualities, of the English county game. And now, with the usual volley of spring brickbats being fired at it from a range of observers - Scyld Berry, Mike Atherton, Steve James - it feels slightly strange to be writing in its defence.

Yesterday I was at Taunton again. The sun shone all day, and, after Chris Adams' bizarre decision to insert Somerset, there was more assured and at times dismissively brilliant batting from Trescothick, Edwards, Langer and especially James Hildreth, who benefited from two early dropped catches but went on to lay waste to a Sussex attack which kept going well but was always swimming against the tide.

The concerns of James and others (including, apparently, the ECB, although they've done precious little about it so far) about the number of Kolpak players are right on the money. As James said earlier this week, if counties like Northants and Leicestershire can't do any better than stuff their side with South Africans, then perhaps the time has come to wonder whether they're serving any useful purpose at all. Despite the advances in competitiveness and quality engendered by two divisions, I've long bought into the view that there are simply too many first-class sides in England, and the way in which counties are making it more and more evident that there isn't enough English talent to go round only weakens the case for their continued existence even more.

However, one of the supposed 'facts' about County Championship cricket, that 'nobody watches it', perhaps leading people who don't go to matches to think that games are always attended by the proverbial 'one man and his dog', simply isn't, in my experience, true. While yesterday's crowd was unusually large, containing as it did a very large number of Sussex supporters, crowds at Taunton, even in midweek, are usually good (it must have been up over the thousand mark yesterday). Okay, about 90% of the people there on any given day are over sixty, but no matter. As a stripling of 42 it keeps me feeling young, and it's nice to be surrounded by people who know and love the game for what it is, rather than seeing a day at the cricket as an opportunity to make an exhibition of themselves.

It's possible that developments in the wider cricketing world may finally force the hands of the ECB and the counties and lead them towards some meaningful change, and, in many ways, this would be a good thing. However, Jack Simmons' idea of reverting to three-day cricket with 120 overs a day ('revealed' in The Times yesterday) can surely be ignored. Take it from me, Jack, you're not going to get modern county cricketers to bowl 120 overs in a day. They can't even manage 96 in a six hour day now and they're not going to like the idea of their working day being lengthened.

Whatever happens, though, those with the power to decide on the issue must be very careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, because there are very many things about county cricket which are still, and will remain, great.

A sunny day at Taunton and a Hildreth century are just two of them.

Nothing Unusual (but still great)

For all the talk of Kolpaks and the damage (or otherwise) they're doing to the English game, a day at the county cricket can still throw up some real pleasures.

Friday at Taunton, was one such day. A typically dead track, to be sure, and Somerset intent on batting all day to make up for a meagre first innings effort against a threadbare Hampshire bowling attack.

There was one good sign, though: Marcus Trescothick and Justin Langer were together at the start of the day, and, by the time they were parted in mid-afternoon, they had taken their team's score from a distinctly rocky 83 for 1 to 355 for 2. Neither of them did anything unusual, or, for them exceptional; Trescothick was dominant, muscular and powerful, Langer controlled, determined and acquisitive, but it was great to watch two Test players of the past (it still feels uncomfortable to say that about Marcus but there's no getting away from the truth of it) toying with an attack of tyros.

One shot sticks in the mind. Late in Trescothick's innings, James Tomlinson, with eight first innings wickets behind him, dropped one short, just outside off stump. Marcus swivelled and pulled it for four to the furthest boundary on the ground, bisecting two boundary fielders and sending a clear message to Tomlinson: I've done that to some of the finest and fastest bowlers in the world. Don't bowl there to me and expect to get away with it.

Of course, Marcus, never the confrontational or arrogant sort, wouldn't have put it like that (or even thought it), but that's how it appeared.

I look forward to a few more moments like that over the coming months.

Owing Nothing

As I was away last weekend I didn't get an opportunity to comment on Marcus Trescothick's retirement from international cricket. I've written about Marcus many times before, and I can't add much to what I said here, or here, or here.

He owes no-one anything. He was a central, if under-appreciated, figure in England's revival between 2000 and 2005 and is one of the ten men alive who'll always be able to say that they played for England throughout the greatest Ashes series of them all.

I look forward to watching him in Somerset colours for a few more years yet.

Opening Up

This, courtesy of Cricinfo and Peter Roebuck, has a bearing on what I was saying the other day and I can only agree with every word.

Problems

After the psychological problems which Marcus Trescothick has been confronting over the last two years it's been sobering indeed to read about the similar issues currently being faced by Shaun Tait and Lou Vincent.

A number of writers (most notably David Frith in his ground-breaking studies of cricket suicides and David Foot in his great book about Harold Gimblett) have considered the fact that cricket appears to attract people who are more prone to illnesses of this sort than other sports. Or does cricket, with its protracted nature, mental and physical intensity and harsh statistical verdicts on its participants, lead people down the road of mental torment to a greater extent than other games?

I'm not sure, but with reference to the ceaseless and often devalued treadmill which modern international cricket has become, I tend towards the latter explanation, certainly as far as Marcus and, to a lesser extent, Vincent, are concerned. It doesn't hold good for Tait, who's never really been given a chance to step on to the treadmill, but then nor do the views of Geoff Boycott, who's seemed very unsympathetic towards him.

As regular readers will know, I have the highest possible regard for Marcus, who I've been watching regularly since he was eighteen. I don't think I've ever seen Vincent play in the flesh, but I know him to be an innovative attacking batsman and an excellent fielder. Shaun Tait I have seen, and my lasting memory of him sees him scrabbling around in the Oval dust as Kevin Pietersen opens up against Brett Lee after lunch on 12th September 2005. For his sake it'd be nice to see him do something better at another time.

Good luck to one and all.

Circling Vultures

A couple of afternoons at Taunton gave me the opportunity to see Somerset confirm their promotion to Division One of the County Championship and to take a first look at the seventeen year-old Glamorgan seamer James Harris, who's taken an impressive number of wickets in his first season in the county game.

The table before the game didn't lie and Glamorgan were comprehensively thrashed by a confident, unified and driven Somerset team, under the unobtrusively forceful and experienced guidance of Justin Langer. Just ten years ago to the month Glamorgan themselves secured the title at Taunton - and there was just one division then - but it's now hard to conceive of when the Welsh county will ever win anything again.

However, in this age of multiple overseas players they continue to rely on homegrown products, and, if they can hang on to Harris and produce a few more like him they might just be able to find a way back.

Harris clearly has a lot of physical filling out to do, but his opening spell on Friday afternoon, when he sent Neil Edwards and Marcus Trescothick back to the pavilion in quick succession, was distinctly impressive. He has a smooth, straight approach to the crease, a good, high, delivery stride and the ability to move the ball both ways off the pitch. It seems to me that he needs to inject a bit more pace and urgency into his run-up and this will encourage him to follow through more and give him extra pace. However, with what already appears to be good control of line and length you feel that the rest will come in time.

These days, though, when a county such as Glamorgan produces a player with the promise of Harris, the vultures start to circle almost immediately. While Glamorgan are already wealthier than some, and are going to join the select group of counties which stage Tests when Australia come to Cardiff in 2009, there is an increasing gap in playing standards, and, in many cases, salaries, between first and second division cricket. The traditionalist in me was very disappointed by the recent news that Stuart Broad, a cricketer of immense promise nurtured by Leicestershire, had signed for Nottinghamshire, a club which, although Broad's father played for them and they can doubtless offer him a far higher salary than Leicestershire can, haven't even assured themselves of a return to the first division yet. Leicestershire suffered similarly when Luke Wright joined Sussex, and, while I also think it would be a pity if a genuine transfer market developed in cricket, you can't help feeling that counties such as Leicestershire deserve some financial compensation when their players are picked off by rivals with greater financial power.

Ruled Out

This afternoon's news that Marcus had ruled himself out of England's winter tours came as something of a surprise. Things have been going so well for Somerset that it didn't seem like a huge leap for him to at least go to the Twenty20 World Cup. That was obviously a glib assumption on my part. He clearly doesn't feel as though he's sufficiently well to undertake even the brief trip to South Africa, and you have to wonder - and not for the first time - if his entire international career has come to a very premature conclusion.

I'd say that this, sadly, is probably the end.

Unconditional Approval

After a workmanlike day on Friday, Saturday at Taunton was truly wonderful. As nice a day as you're going to get this summer, a very good crowd and fulfilling yet contrasting innings from Marcus Trescothick, Neil Edwards, Justin Langer and James Hildreth.

Langer could have made his 83 in his sleep, and Hildreth fell to his first misjudgement; Edwards was impressive, if not quite as fluent as on Friday evening; Trescothick was simply magnificent. After easing himself into Saturday morning and occasionally looking ugly and dissonant as his mistiming got the better of him, he suddenly went up a gear and began to take apart an attack which, whatever Lance Klusener's empty bluster, wasn't fit to lace his boots.

He reached his hundred with a straight six off Jason Brown (pictured) and continued to extend Somerset's lead to the point where some unwise innovation led to his dismissal, caught at the wicket off Alex Wakely, who added to the good impression he'd created with the bat with some tidy off-spin.

Marcus, of course, received a moving and resonant standing ovation. A player at home with the unconditional approval of his people, but needing, surely, the greater stimulus which only further international competition will provide.

Whatever. Good, good times.

A Bit of Luck

After a very frustrating, very wet, month I was due a bit of luck and I got it today. With most of the country again being rained on I managed to see a very interesting 74 overs at Taunton in which Northants were bowled out for 221 and Somerset's left-handed openers, Marcus Trescothick and Neil Edwards, motored to 77 off 13 overs by the close.

All Somerset's bowlers - Andy Caddick, Charl Willoughby, Peter Trego, Steffan Jones and Cameron White - bowled some tight lines in helpful conditions and were supported by some very sharp fielding, with Trescothick at slip, and the young South African wicket-keeper, Craig Kieswetter, taking excellent catches.

Prior to Steven Crook's 60 from number 8, the most interesting contribution to Northants' total came from the England under-19 batsman Alex Wakely, who was making his first-class debut. He was unexpectedly tall but showed good judgement and a broad range of strokes in compiling a patient 38.

With rain forecast for Sunday and possibly Monday as well, Somerset will need to push on tomorrow morning to get a decent lead as quickly as possible and get Northants back in.

I'll be there to see them try.

Rough Deal

It's been a fairly quiet week. The only major news stories in this neck of the woods have been India's narrow failure to win their first tour match at Hove, the ECB's decision to order Worcestershire to re-play the Kent game (which was eventually - and inevitably - abandoned), and the preliminary England squad for the Twenty20 World Cup in September.

For what it's worth I think the ECB got it just about right over Worcestershire, although I wouldn't expect the people in charge of other counties who have been badly affected by the weather in this bedraggled season to agree. A ticking-off for what was undoubtedly a major cock-up (New Road was never going to be ready in time and it was deceitful at worst and deluded at best to pretend otherwise) and Friday's Pro 40 game moved to Derby, together with some financial assistance to help with the clean-up.

The news which everyone has grabbed from the Twenty20 squad has been the returns of Marcus Trescothick and, to a lesser extent, Chris Schofield. One after a journey into mental turmoil and the other after a sojourn in Minor County cricket. In truth the selection of Marcus was a no-brainer - the squad has still to be whittled down and he can easily be cut from it if he starts to have doubts about the trip - but I think he'll be there. If he isn't all bets are off for the future of his career.

As for who won't be there, am I alone in feeling that Ed Joyce has had a rough deal somewhere along the line? Okay, his form did fade in the West Indies but this is someone with an ODI hundred against Australia, which is a tad more than Mal Loye (highest score 45) can boast.

Still Got It

With nothing happening very fast at Chester-le-Street I took myself off up the M5 to Bristol yesterday to see Somerset wrap up a crushing innings win over Gloucestershire to go to the top of Division Two of the championship.

It was an enjoyable day to be a Somerset fan despite the surroundings. I hadn't been there for a few seasons and I was reminded of what a characterless and charmless ground Nevil Road is. The Bristol public weren't exactly breaking down the gates to get in either, and the crowd - containing a substantial Somerset contingent - seemed small, but then the Gloucestershire side was so appallingly bad that you couldn't really blame them.

I left the day with a few lasting impressions, the first of which was the confidence and team spirit of a Somerset side which, in case anyone is liable to forget, finished bottom of the pile last season. It's incredible what a few weeks of consistent run-scoring from Trescothick, Edwards, White, Langer and Hildreth, knitted together with Langer's positive, typically Australian, captaincy, can do.

And then there's the seam attack. The best thing about the day was seeing Andy Caddick clean up the second Gloucestershire innings to finish with twelve wickets in the match. Having taken seven on Saturday he eased himself into his work after his side's mid-afternoon declaration, looking stiff and bowling a little too wide in his first spell, but returning after tea to polish off the innings in conjunction with the equally reliable Charl Willoughby. Even though the most resonant impression was of a man shooting fish in a barrel, it was the sort of afternoon which sent the mind spinning back through the seasons, to the time I first saw him bowl (for Middlesex seconds) in 1989, to his Test debut in 1993, and to the time I stood to applaud him in the Lord's Grandstand as he went through the West Indies in 2000.

At this level, he's still got it (and he had some interesting fields yesterday too).

Raw Pace

Well, Marcus didn't make the 300 (or even the 200), but 182 wasn't too bad, and, with Strauss failing again at Old Trafford, you can see the clamour for his return to the England side starting again soon. It was also good to see Hildreth and White make further tons, and Leicestershire stand on the brink of what's certain to be a very heavy defeat.

At Manchester it seemed like a more even, and therefore more interesting day. The standard half-century from Cook, further signs of form from Vaughan, quality from Bell and some refreshingly raw pace from the recalled Fidel Edwards.

Good stuff, for a change.

Carnage

As the tit-for-tat discussions over what exactly Michael Vaughan did or didn't say continued (I had no problem with any of it, by the way, unlike the rather precious Jim Cumbes), I was at work today and so didn't get to witness any of what must have been some rare old carnage at Taunton. Leicestershire 168, Somerset 357 for 1 off 60 overs by the close with the Cornishman Neil Edwards out for 133 and Marcus still going strong on 153 overnight.

He'll start tomorrow with more than half an eye on 300, never mind 200.

Reintroduction

With his 284 for Somerset against Northants there seems to be an implication in many parts of the media that Marcus Trescothick should be reintroduced to the England side as soon as possible.

I can't agree, and feel strongly that he shouldn't be considered for England again until he's absolutely certain he's ready, and from all his recent public statements it doesn't look as though that time has come yet.

Perhaps it will have done by the time India are here in July, although Peter Moores and his fellow selectors will have to think long and hard about whether he's able to stand up to the physical and mental rigours of an overseas tour, and, if they feel that he isn't, whether he can be selected for home Tests alone.

It'll all play out in due course, but, in the meantime, we in the south-west can enjoy his runs, not to mention those of James Hildreth, who made a century, and Ian Blackwell, who made 81.

A better season than last year may be in sight for Somerset, although you have to wonder how they're ever going to bowl anyone out twice on that Taunton pitch.

Wanting More

As the fantastic English weather continues I've been easing myself into the season - a game of my own in the Devon countryside on Sunday and a day at Taunton today, watching Derbyshire pile up 801 and Somerset stutter late in the day to finish on 107 for 4.

Marcus played pretty well for his 32 but he will have wanted and expected more.

The way things are going he'll get another chance tomorrow.