County cricket: T20 Blast groups tighten before final run of fixtures

There was midsummer mayhem at the Oval on Tuesday night as Peter Siddle, on a hat-trick for Somerset, bowled to Conor McKerr needing to hit a boundary to win the match. Everyone, including the Surrey batter, knew it would, like the previous two deliveries, be spearing into off stump and everyone knew, including the bowler, that the batter would clear his front leg and swing hard. So, if you’re a captain in that scenario, what should you do?

I would have posted a long leg for the inside edge and put the other eight available fielders on the off side, closing off half the rope as a realistic target. That way, you invite an attempt on the near-impossibility of finding a gap on one side of the field or the equally tough job for the No 10 of stepping across his stumps and hitting an experienced international bowler from off to leg with a good enough connection to go all the way. It would be a bold batter indeed who tried that trick first ball.

McKerr swung at the ball that arrived exactly where he expected and it skimmed to the extra cover boundary to provoke delight and despair. Surrey’s unbeaten record lived on (for a couple of days, as it transpired).

Do you ever go to matches primarily to see the fielding? At Lord’s on Thursday (which was so beautiful to behold in a golden hour that would have had David Lean reaching for his camera), neither Middlesex nor Essex batted or bowled particularly well (though Sam Cook and Chris Green might dispute that), but there were any number of spectacular catches in the field. The pick of the highlights reel was probably Dan Lawrence’s diving snare of John Simpson at widish slip, an airborne blur to the naked eye.

Fielding witnessed up close and personal is an often overlooked delight of