‘Somerset have a destroyer in their ranks in Riley Meredith’

TRAVELLING up to Trent Bridge at the weekend to get an insight of how the Somerset players are re-adapting themselves back to four-day county cricket, having spent the last month looking to retain their title of T20 Blast Champions, gave us all an interesting insight.

At the same time, it was good to catch up with others members who had also made the journey, to get their views on whether the club are continuing to improve and impress.

John Parkin, who comes from Wellington, said: “I think Somerset are playing well in both competitions.

“I believe Lewis Gregory has become a very good captain, he certainly takes more risks, and I really like the fact that the young players that the Somerset coaching staff have brought through are still improving and in Riley Meredith, what a talent we have with him, although I was surprised he didn’t play against Gloucestershire, a game we lost having been in control for 90 per cent of the game on Friday.

“I am not sure why he didn’t play, but overall we have a team of so many talented players, you cant help but be excited and I agree with you, every player has the ability to be a match winner.

“It also appears we are making more of an effort to challenge for the county championship for the first time, but at the moment I still believe like you do, that Surrey are the team to beat and they appear to have so much money at their disposal, they could almost sign anyone. Surrey are without doubt the Manchester City in cricketing circles.

“The only hope we have is in the fact so many Surrey players will get selected for England, so that might just give us an outside chance, but money speaks for everything in cricket nowadays.”

On the second day of the county championship game, I was fortunate to have a chat with Nottinghamshire England batting hopeful Joe Clarke about his chances of playing for England and also how he rates Tom Abell amongst others.

The Nottinghamshire star batsman felt he had little opportunity in the future, although he was still hopeful, but he did agree with me about Tom Abell’s pedigree after the both of us had watched Abell score a century on the Monday of the game.

To be fair, the wicket appeared to get better on the second day, my one concern however still lies in the fact that the Somerset bowlers are not always capable of blowing away the tail and Olly Stone proved that at the end of the first day by scoring only his second half century of his career, but he dominated the Somerset bowling and never looked in any kind of trouble.

For Somerset, Kasey Aldridge and Migael Pretorius were the pick of the bowlers, but in Meredith, Somerset have a destroyer in their ranks and eventually who, if anyone, is good enough to take over his mantle?