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Posted:
Wednesday 25th June 2008
Source: Stephen Birley
Bradninch had three players in the Devon under 21 side with an
average age of just over eighteen and a half that took the field
at Exmouth�s Maer Ground to meet a Somerset XI that sported a
team with 72 test caps, 64 ODI appearances over 12,500 first
class runs and 1,633 wickets. Somerset duly won the contest
but not before our very own Dan Hardy produced a quite
magnificent display with the bat, one that more than made up for
a dropped catch in the outfield during the Somerset innings.
Ross Acton dismissed opener John Francis with his second
delivery, and although he was not to take another wicket, in the
context of the game, his figures of 1-37 from ten over sat very
nicely in the scorebook. Later in the Somerset innings Tim
Piper held a catch to see the end of Carl Gazzard who he caught
off the bowling of Mark Orchard. Dan Hardy opened the innings
for the Devon side with John Bess and they faced former England
ace Andy Caddick who was playing to ease himself back to fitness
after injury problems. Bess was caught off Caddick for 21 with
the score at 43-1, and then Hardy and Lewis Gregory put on 79 in
a partnership that lasted 66 minutes and took up 107 deliveries
before Gregory was dismissed. Hardy�s fifty came up in seventy
eight balls, this his first half-century since he took 62 off
Gloucestershire in 2006 and hopefully he is now fully recovered
from his injury problems that restricted his opportunities at
this level in 2007. Caddick turned to spin in the shape of
Omari Banks and Jack Leach and the Devon reply began to wilt
including our own Tim Piper who was stumped without troubling
the scorers too much, and the score slipped from 120-1 to 160-5,
but Hardy ploughed on with an array of impressive stroke-making
coupled with gritty defence and he looked well on the way to
what would have been a richly deserved and indeed memorable
century but he came up against an opposing side who did their
best to deny him the strike opting to let Hardy take a single at
the start of an over and then keep him away from the strike, it
was almost as if it became a �contest within the contest� to see
if Hardy�s ton could be prevented! At the start of the final
over of the day Hardy was still there on 94, a single on the
first ball left him then unable to get back on strike and so he
trudged off with a glorious unbeaten 95 to his name � what was
so pleasing for Hardy would have been to see in the score book
at the close of play that he and Gazzard had both batted for the
entire time their respective sides had been at the wicket and
that�s some achievement � WELL DONE DAN HARDY- that County ton�s
a coming������ | 
