On his way to reaching 71 not out, Tom Westley took initiative
Alastair Cook only intended to stay for a short while to have fun. The Spitfire Ground was left empty by mid-afternoon as a healthy crowd of fans left for cozier surroundings in Canterbury or elsewhere.
The Essex captain and opener, Tom Westley and Nick Browne, appeared very well-inclined to stick around despite the start of some bad weather, which finally stole their thunder.
The naive expectation would be that by Round 3, coats and scarves would no longer be necessary, but that wasn’t the case as the players walked the field under a sky in which the sun engaged and defeated thick cloud cover in the morning as a bitter wind kept temperatures at a bitter 12 degrees.
The ice cream vehicle, however, and more significantly the spectators who were warmly dressed in bobble hats and gloves while enjoying some excellent Essex batting on a level surface, were unaffected by this.
Wes Agar, the Australian quick hired last week to support Kent’s seam attack until the arrival of India left-armer Arshdeep Singh in June, will also have impressed the home crowd.
Agar bowled back-to-back maidens for his first two overs while wearing a Kent jersey and playing county cricket just five days after coming to England. He also allowed only eight runs from his first four balls.
Alaister Cook launches another attack, this time against Agar after threading the first ball he faced, off Nathan Gilchrist, for four through point and then helping himself to three more off Gilchrist’s next over in a quick-paced knock.
Cook blasted him through square leg and lifted him over the gully before hitting a magnificent back-foot drive over the covers for three consecutive boundaries and nine overall in a 39-run knock.
With his very next delivery, Agar put an end to Cook’s 30-ball innings when Sam Billings caught the edge behind the stumps, giving him at the time statistics of 5-2-20-1. On a short day with only 42 overs possible, Agar produced five maidens out of his 13 total, finishing with 1 for 39.
It’s interesting to note that during the 2013 Ashes, Ashton Agar, the older brother of Agar, had dismissed Cook to take his first Test wicket at the age of 19.
However, a Test call-up in the future is not out of the question for a player who has twice represented his country in ODIs and Australia A on a first-class tour of New Zealand at the beginning of April, right before Kent came calling.
The 26-year-old Wes was understandably cautious in assessing his chances of breaking into the running for this year’s edition in England.
“If you asked me that question maybe four months ago, I would have laughed at you but I guess playing well during the Aussie summer and going away with the Aussie A [side], there’s something in the back of your mind,” said Wes, the Sheffield Shield’s fourth-highest wicket-taker for 2022-23 with 36 at 27.36 and an economy rate of 3.10.
“Definitely not something that I’m thinking about, definitely not something that I think will happen, but if you do well, you put your name up, maybe not for this one but for future honors later down the track.”
In contrast to his two-and-a-half-hour, 120-ball 43 on Sunday that saved a draw with Lancashire, Westley could afford to be less cautious on this occasion.
By the time some fans agreed to leave their seats during the lunch break despite gritted teeth, lifted collars, and fists firmly buried in pockets, he had reached 48 not out from 58 balls, compared to Browne’s slower 34 off 92.
Soon after the break, Westley surpassed Cook’s four-point total by driving Conor McKerr through the point. A much more intimidating layer of thick, gray cloud was delivered to the ground by the time Browne passed fifty within a half-hour of his skipper.
It also caused an industrial-sized wheelie bin on the grass bank to topple over, the nearby car-boot bookseller to close up shop, and the owner of the deserted ice cream van to consider doing the same.
Westley and Browne were both unbeaten when play was stopped for 10 minutes at 2.19 p.m. owing to poor lighting and a high wind that prevented the floodlights from being raised.
When Westley got a top edge to a Gilchrist delivery that sailed above third slip, Jack Leaning could only parry a difficult opportunity to the rope in the dim light.
Westley was still on 67 at the time. The players left the lower tier of the Colin Cowdrey Stand at that point as the rain began to fall heavily, following the last few daring spectators.
After a delay of more than two hours, play was stopped for the day at 5 o’clock. Then, around 5.05 p.m., as a few spots of blue sky started to appear in the horizon, it seemed only fitting to reflect that Agar could say that on his first-time playing county cricket, he had encountered the classic April day in the Championship.
“The boys said, ‘welcome to some county cricket,’” Agar smiled. “It’s funny, cricketers in general, you don’t mind rain, but this is the one time where sometimes you wish it’d go away, when you’re excited to go out there and bowl. But you can’t do anything about the weather.
“It’s a great opportunity to develop craft. I’m not necessarily known as a swing bowler; I tend to bash the wicket in a cricket term. I think coming over here you have to adapt and you have to change your game a little bit. It’s a great time for me to explore what I can do, explore how I can add to my game, not change it, but add strings to my bow in terms of using swing to your advantage, putting balls in different areas to create wickets on different pitches.
“I didn’t put too much expectation on myself as an international coming over, sometimes you can do that. I just wanted to get into a rhythm, get into a groove – I was able to do that early – and then hold that for as long as I can, take pride in what I do, take pride in playing well for a team that’s given me an opportunity.”
