Bell hits second hundred in match as Warwickshire tighten grip

Cricket

Warwickshire 250 (Bell 106, Trott 57, van der Gugten 4-65) and 294 for 6 (Bell 115*, Trott 67, Salter 4-80) beat Glamorgan 220 (Poysden 5-29) and 323 (Khawaja 125, Cooke 59) by four wickets
Scorecard

The difficult final day Warwickshire might have anticipated turned out to be relatively comfortable as another handsome partnership between the two old stagers, Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott, set them up for a fourth consecutive victory.

Bell, who had gone more than two years without a Championship century until two days ago, completed a second in the match, unbeaten in both. A return to Division One of the Championship at the first attempt already looks highly likely.

The season is only a third of the way through but already Warwickshire’s points total, from five matches, is 11 more than they garnered from 14 last year, which says quite a lot about the difference in quality between the divisions. Barring two or three changes, this is the same Warwickshire team that suffered nine defeats in 2017 and finished 60 points behind the rest.

There are questions to be answered, clearly, about the structure of the Championship, while Warwickshire will know that they may struggle again at the higher level without more changes. But those are for another day.

For the moment, their supporters can at least anticipate a decent summer and hope to enjoy watching Bell and Trott turn back the clock just a few more times. Although Bell has not yet given any hints about retirement – he is contracted for another two seasons after this – Trott is finishing at the end of the current year. There will not be many more days like these.

Almost 74 years and 170 Test caps between them is the measure of their experience and they drew on it to good effect here, adding 113 runs in 30 overs for the third wicket to take Warwickshire a good chunk of the way to their target of 294 to win. On a used wicket, Glamorgan felt their spinners might give them a decent chance of winning here for the first time in 30 years but Andrew Salter, the off-spinner who is their senior slow bowler in this game, will not have faced many batsmen more adept than these two against spin, certainly not in tandem.

Until Glamorgan turned to David Lloyd’s seam at the pavilion end just after tea and Trott, falling over slightly, was leg before trying to work to leg, it seemed unlikely the partnership would end unless, as in the first innings, one of them ran the other out. Indeed, there were a couple of times it nearly happened.

Trott fell for 67 but Bell, for the second time in the match, was going nowhere, completing his second century off 160 balls with 14 boundaries, achieving the feat of two hundreds in the same match for the second time in his career. He did it before against Lancashire at Old Trafford in 2004, which was the last time, in fact, that any Warwickshire batsman has made 100 or more in both innings.

In the end, then, Glamorgan missed Michael Hogan and Marchant de Lange, sidelined with hamstring injuries, as much as they thought they might at the start and it will be a relief to have both back to face Derbyshire next week.

Wickets in the morning session was always likely to be the determining factor in the outcome and Warwickshire lost only one as Will Rhodes and Dominic Sibley compiled their first hundred stand as an opening partnership. There was a brief hint of a wobble when Sam Hain was bowled by Lloyd second ball and another when Salter, who had dismissed both openers, removed Tim Ambrose and Keith Barker in the space of three balls to claim career-best figures, but Bell remained to hit the winning boundary at around ten past five.

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