Sam Northeast sends the Kookaburra south as Middlesex are put to flight

Glamorgan 370 for 3 (Northeast 186*, Carlson 77, Root 67) vs Middlesex

In a dank begin to the 12 months, few would have the opportunity to state with any confidence that they’ve but heard their first cuckoo of spring. However cock an ear to the shires on this chilly gray day in April, and also you’d hear loud and clear the mocking snicker of the Kookaburra – an invasive species in these components, and one which’s been flown in direct from the Antipodes to disrupt the habitat of county cricket’s native seamers.

For it was a case of 4 washouts and one wipeout on the opening day of the 2024 County Championship. The legendary standing of the Lord’s drainage meant that London’s morning downpours have been by no means possible to trigger the points encountered at Derby or Outdated Trafford, however when Toby Roland-Jones received the toss for Middlesex and selected to bowl first, he couldn’t have envisaged a first-day scoreline of 370 for 3 grinning again at him, or that his incorrectly calling counterpart can be sitting fairly on 186 not out from 266 balls.

Not so quick. Though the influence was extra obvious at Lord’s than elsewhere, in the event you squinted by means of the clouds that enveloped this primary day of county motion, a standard theme emerged, with lots of the contests reflecting exactly the kind of clear-skied Ashes scoreline that this ball-switching experiment has been designed to get rid of – a smattering of breakthroughs inside the first 15 or so overs, together with Ethan Bamber’s snicking-off of Zain-ul-Hassan for this 12 months’s maiden Championship wicket, then scant reward and numerous onerous yakka thereafter.

Northeast did had a second of luck on 11, when Max Holden spilled him at backward level off Bamber, however he may hardly have made it depend with extra aplomb. With a brief boundary down the hill to the Mound Stand, he peppered his drives as the shine went off the ball and the Kookaburra’s extra slender seam resolutely refused to grip.

However a schoolboy hundred for Harrow versus Eton in 2007 (when Gary Ballance, no much less, had been a team-mate), in three earlier Championship matches at Lord’s, relationship again to his first-ball duck for Kent as a 21-year-old in 2011, Northeast had mustered a complete of fifty runs at 10.00. Now he rushed previous that complete from simply 51 balls in a joyous spring offensive, with Root scarcely any extra sluggish in getting to his fifty from 63 balls, in a second-wicket stand of 129.

By the time he’d flicked the under-used Ryan Higgins off his toes for the twenty sixth and closing 4, Northeast had romped alongside to 179 from 241 balls, and with nearly an hour of the day nonetheless remaining, he appeared odds-on to rack up a exceptional first-day double-hundred.

As an alternative, with the second Kookaburra providing maybe only a fraction extra help than the first, he took his foot off the throttle as the shut approached – as is the wont of a person who, two seasons in the past, racked up the Championship’s most up-to-date quadruple-century. At the fee this innings has progressed, and with the new ball already primed for its mid-life disaster at the age of 16 overs, there will be loads extra the place these have already come from.