Glamorgan chip away five wickets with new ball looming

ECB Reporters Network25-May-2024Peter Handscomb’s second century of the season helped Leicestershire reach 280 for five in reply to Glamorgan’s 387 on day two of their Vitality County Championship match at the Uptonsteel County Ground.The Australian Test batter finished unbeaten on 102 after sharing a fourth-wicket stand of 141 with captain Lewis Hill, who made 92, although Glamorgan remain in a strong position in the match with a lead of 107 and the chance to bowl with a new ball only five overs old when they resume on day three.Earlier, Leicestershire seamer Scott Currie had recorded the first five-wicket haul of his first-class career, finishing with five for 64.Handscomb, who signed a two-year contract last year after a successful first season with Leicestershire, has started the season in impressive form, with 547 runs already to his name after scoring 51 or higher in six of his eight innings so far in the first half of the Division Two programme.He reached today’s hundred from 160 balls with his 12th four, driven down the ground off James Harris.Currie needed just one delivery at the start of the second morning to claim the fifth wicket he had hoped might come his way after Glamorgan resumed on 352 for eight.Straying down the leg side, it was hardly the best ball Currie bowled in his 26 overs but it brushed Sam Northeast’s glove on the way through to ‘keeper Ben Cox and umpire Neil Bainton raised the finger. Four for 109 for Hampshire against Surrey in April 2021 was the 23-year-old’s previous best.A fourth batting point eluded Glamorgan, but not until Mir Hamza had provided some entertainment on his way to an unbeaten 24.The Pakistan Test bowler’s vigorous hoicking at anything on the leg side brought him a four and two sixes – one off a top edge – and a moment of comedy when he mistakenly thought he had hit Currie to the midwicket boundary, unaware that the ball had hit part of his body padding and was trickling along the pitch just a few feet from him. Fortunately for him, after setting off nonchalantly for a presumed unnecessary run, Currie’s shy at the stumps missed.He and Harris thus added 35 for the last wicket before Harris was caught behind.It left Leicestershire needing first to reach 238 to avoid the follow-on, which looked a long way off when Marcus Harris and Louis Kimber were out in consecutive overs to leave them 38 for two.Australian international Harris – like Hamza in the last match of his county stint – was leg before to a full-length ball from the Pakistan left-armer before Louis Kimber edged behind off Timm van der Gugten. When Rishi Patel perished in similar fashion after lunch – a second wicket for the Netherlands international seamer on his first appearance of the campaign – Leicestershire were in difficulty at 65 for three.Hill and Handscomb were then thoroughly tested with the ball by Hamza, whose growing frustration as a string of appeals were turned down led umpire Bainton to speak to his captain.Leicestershire’s fourth-wicket pair weathered the storm and, with the pitch seeming to flatten out somewhat, Hill completed his second half-century of the season off 98 balls and had progressed to 66 out of 161 for three at tea.Handscomb followed suit soon afterwards, his coming off 90 balls just after he had glanced Van der Gugten to the fine-leg boundary for his seventh four.The pitch was looking increasingly unhelpful to the bowlers, and Harris’s tactic of banging the ball in short did not look to be working until it suddenly did, in a less conventional way, when Hill played a deliberate uppercut to a delivery from round the wicket and was caught by Billy Root, scampering in from third man.Within reach of a first hundred of the season, the Leicestershire captain’s dismay was palpable in every movement of his body as he trudged back to the pavilion.Nonetheless, his 141-run stand with Handscomb had taken his side much of the way towards the follow-on point, which was passed, in the event, when new man Ian Holland cut Zain Ul-Hassan through backward point for his first boundary as a Leicestershire player.In the event it was his only boundary of a debut innings that ended when he followed one down the leg side to be caught behind soon after Glamorgan had taken the new ball.