Taunton subplots as Yorkshire’s Dom Bess enjoys his return to Somerset

Take Dom Bess versus Jack Leach, for example.

Who would win? The Yorkshire off-spinner, or his former Somerset team-mate, his partner in crime during several years in Taunton?

When Leach walked out to bat at No 9 in the Somerset first innings, on a second day that saw them dismissed for 424 on the stroke of tea before Yorkshire replied with 167-4, there was an early lbw shout as Bess rapped his old mate on the pads playing no shot.

It looked close. It might even have been out. But the umpire was unmoved, and both combatants smiled – Leach a little sheepishly, Bess ruefully.

Leach dusted himself down, hitched up his trousers, and soon came down the pitch to plonk Bess for six over long-off. Bess looked back with incredulous expression; Leach simply strolled down the pitch and punched gloves with Kasey Aldridge, his batting partner, as if to say, “What’s up, ‘Bessy’? All in a day’s work.”

Bess did not get Leach out – that honour fell to his fellow off-spinner Jack Shutt, who tempted another dance down the track but this time a miss, wicketkeeper Jonny Tattersall completing the stumping.

But he had the last laugh in terms of final figures of 4-68 from 29 overs, a fine effort on his first return to Taunton since leaving Somerset for Yorkshire.

Then there was Jack Brooks versus Adam Lyth, two former Yorkshire team-mates who twice won the County Championship together in the mid-2010s.

Brooks, who left for Somerset after the 2018 season, is still going strong at the age of 38. He took the new ball but the early successes belonged to Lyth, who pulled a no-ball for four and then pushed Brooks’s next delivery to the cover boundary, a shot that softly chastised: “Can’t bowl to me there, Jack, you know that.”

Brooks dusted himself down, hitched up his trousers, and soon slanted one across Lyth that he drove into the hands of the gully fielder. Honours even, you could just about say, “The Headband Warrior” peeling away in familiar celebration.

Then there was Tom Kohler-Cadmore versus Somerset full-stop, the club he is joining at the end of the season. Unsettled by events at Headingley in the winter, Kohler-Cadmore showed Somerset what they will be getting and Yorkshire what they will be missing, as if Yorkshire and their supporters did not already know.

On a breezy day in the cloudy south-west, one which saw a 40-minute rain delay before lunch at the cost of 11 overs, Kohler-Cadmore held the reply together, top-scoring with 68 not out in his first Championship innings of the summer.

He faced 112 balls and hit six fours along with four sixes off Leach all roughly in the “V”. Whereas Bess was parsimonious, Leach was profligate, going at five an over against batsmen who, in the case of Kohler-Cadmore and Harry Brook, played him proactively and with little respect.

After Lyth’s departure was followed by that of George Hill, whom Leach tempted into a loft out to deep extra-cover, his solitary success, Brook looked excellent for 41 from 54 balls with four fours and two pulled sixes off Marchant de Lange – or “The Merchant of Menace”, as he is known in these parts.

But when Brook clipped a leg-side half-volley from Brooks to mid-wicket, where Aldridge took a good tumbling catch, not only did a stand of 74 with Kohler-Cadmore end most unexpectedly but it was followed by a golden duck for Matthew Revis, whom Brooks pinned in front.

Matthew Waite kept out the hat-trick ball, having earlier played his part with the ball for figures of 3-64 from 28 overs. Waite got the key wicket of Tom Abell, the Somerset captain, lbw to one that came back and which kept a tad low after adding only two to his overnight 114 after Somerset resumed on 262-5.

Lewis Gregory added 90 with Aldridge for the seventh-wicket, Bess having Gregory taken at long-on for 77 from 132 balls. Aldridge, making just his fourth first-class appearance, was last out swinging at Shannon Gabriel, who once again struggled, Bess taking his fourth wicket when Brooks played back and was caught behind.

In conditions about 10 degrees cooler than the first day, hovering around the 20-mark, there was once again a large number of children in the ground as Somerset built on their ties with local schools.

The youngsters actually seemed to enjoy themselves yet, incredibly, there was no white ball in sight, no coloured clothing, no countdown clocks from 100 to zero, no assorted gimmicks or screaming halfwits on the PA system.

Why, the rhythms of the Championship seemed engrossing enough – food for thought for our gluttonous administrators.