da supremo： A stern half century from Peter Bowler (62*) has helped extricate Somersetfrom peril late on day two of his team’s County Championship match againstDurham at Chester-le-Street
Staff and agencies29-Jul-2000A stern half century from Peter Bowler (62*) has helped extricate Somersetfrom peril late on day two of his team’s County Championship match againstDurham at Chester-le-Street. Together with Graham Rose (15*), Bowler addedan unbeaten 56 for the seventh wicket to steer Somerset to relative safetyat 144/6 – in response to Durham’s 292 – by the close.Bowler’s steadiness in a crisis has often seen him mount rescue acts forthe men from the south-west, but even he must have felt a certain sense offrustration at his teammates’ general inability to survive on a perfectlyreasonable pitch this time around. As the score plummeted toward 88/6,Jamie Cox (5) lost his leg stump to a skidding ball from Melvyn Betts;Marcus Trescothick (17) was bowled by one that Simon Brown seamed back intohim; the labouring Piran Holloway (14) was trapped on the crease by JohnWood; Neil Killeen found the edge of the bat of Keith Parsons (1); RobTurner (3) failed to ground his push off bat and pad to short cover; andthen Ian Blackwell (10) became Wood’s third victim when wicketkeeper GaryPratt clutched a superb left handed catch. It was not a particularlyedifying performance and Rose’s relative comfort in surviving until stumps,while a badly needed development, said as much.Earlier in the day, Durham had added seventy-seven runs to its own scorebefore last man Brown fell in the opening over after lunch. Typicallywholehearted commitment to the cause from both Brown (10) and Betts (33*)had seen a valuable thirty-three runs added for the last wicket of aninnings which had threatened to subside quickly after the long vigil ofopener Jon Lewis (115) had ended only a matter of minutes into the day.