Tom Westley passed fifty for the fifth time in eight County Championship innings before rain arrived at Chelmsford to confirm the inevitable draw between Essex and Warwickshire.<\/p>\n
The rejuvenated Essex captain was 51 not out, with seven fours in his 103-ball innings, to follow his 148 first time round. <\/p>\n
He had put on 86 in 28 overs with Paul Walter for the second wicket before umbrellas went up and the players scampered for shelter. Walter had contributed 35 to a stand that took Essex’s lead to a nominal 213.<\/p>\n
The match was effectively over as a contest late on the third evening when Ed Barnard struck the boundary that took Warwickshire past their follow-on target of 453, despite having just one wicket in hand. What had become a damp squib was officially called off at 15:25 BST.<\/p>\n
The 14 points Essex gained kept them just ahead of the relegation places in Division One, while Warwickshire’s dozen points mean they are safely in mid-table.<\/p>\n
Barnard, meanwhile, gained reward for his overnight effort the morning after when he was left unbeaten on 108 in Warwickshire’s first-innings 485, 117 behind Essex’s 602-6 declared. <\/p>\n
The remarkably consistent all-rounder’s 123-ball knock took his season’s tally to 815 runs with three centuries. Matt Critchley’s marathon spell of 40 overs for Essex returned figures of 5-171.<\/p>\n
With Dean Elgar absent from the field since day one with a calf injury, Essex promoted Noah Thain to open their second innings. But Essex’s faith in the up-and-coming all-rounder was not fulfilled as Ethan Bamber got one to lift off the pitch and take the outside edge with only two against his name.<\/p>\n
Westley drove his first ball for four, but was fortunate when he reached 19 that a diving Kai Smith could not cling on to a catch in Beau Webster’s first over.<\/p>\n
Westley reached his fifty from 103 balls, clipping Hannon-Dalby past an unusual legside field comprising six fielders in a semi-circle between short mid-on and square leg. It turned out to be the last meaningful action before rain set in at 14:25.<\/p>\n
Walter had been comparatively subdued at the other end, though he did strike two boundaries in the last over before lunch that brought up the fifty partnership from a leisurely 18 overs.<\/p>\n
Barnard, 90 not out overnight, had become the game’s fifth century-maker when he swept Critchley for four from the 114th ball he faced. He had already launched the leg-spinner over midwicket for six during the 23 minutes that Warwickshire’s first innings extended into the fourth morning.<\/p>\n
Oliver Hannon-Dalby had kept Barnard company the previous evening when the ninth-wicket pair ensured Warwickshire moved safely beyond the follow-on mark. He remained unfazed for 27 balls in total, 15 in the morning, before Westley introduced his occasional off-breaks and had the number 11 lbw with his fourth delivery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Westley passed fifty for the fifth time in eight County Championship innings before rain arrived at Chelmsford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-40353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}