Bullish Blackwell takes his chances

Glamorgan 169 and 152-0 v Somerset 600-8 dec

As Somerset's total spurted up to 600 and they declared at tea-time yesterday, you began to think of the slaughter of the innocents.

However, the only qualified innocent in Glamorgan's side is Mark Wallace, the 20-year-old wicketkeeper. The average age of the side is 28, and some of them were looking very mature indeed. The Somerset total was regularly assisted by misfields and dropped catches. Poor Robert Croft's two wickets had cost him 137 runs by tea.

After the break we learned that Glamorgan's bowlers at least had been the casualties of a wicket that is playing so well that you could call it a feather-bed. When Glamorgan batted again, 431 behind, Steve James and James Maher scored runs just as easily. By the close they had put on 152 together and Glamorgan were 279 behind. Somerset could have done with a wicket, but the ball is beginning to turn slowly and they remain strong favourites.

Somerset had gone on the attack first thing on the kind of hot sunny morning in Taunton that makes you feel as though all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. (Even the train had pulled in on time.)

Ian Blackwell had come in when 19 runs had been added to the overnight score of 246 for 3 and Mark Lathwell had celebrated his 50 by getting out leg before. By lunch Blackwell had scored 97 off 102 balls with 15 fours and two sixes. He had been dropped three times before he reached three figures, but no one would begrudge him notching up his hundred. He is 23, and he was originally in the side as a left-arm spinner, but it is his batting that has impressed this summer. He appeared at number eight on the scorecard yesterday, but came in at six, and immediately set about the bowling.

Blackwell is one of the reasons for Somerset's exciting performance so far this season. They are second in the first division, and they believe they have glimpsed a place where Somerset have never been before – top of the County Championship.

Kevin Shine, in his first year as coach after the surprising decision to appoint him Dermot Reeve's successor, explains that they are fit and injury free. The signing of Richard Johnson and Keith Dutch from Middlesex has proved fruitful (Dutch also scored freely yesterday, and was on 69 when the declaration came), and they have managed to get by without with Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Caddick for much of the season.

"The ball's got sparks coming off it," said Shine, as Blackwell and Peter Bowler passed Somerset's record partnership for the fifth wicket against Glamorgan. (Not many people bothered.) Blackwell scored faster, though having lived by the sword he died by it, giving an easy catch in the covers.

However, Bowler scored more runs. Bowler, who will be 38 tomorrow, had come in at the fall of the second wicket at 58. When he was out, also caught in the covers after a juggling act by Steve James, the score was 505 and Bowler had made 164 of them. Because he scored more slowly, the temptation is to say that he accumulated the runs, but Bowler got 22 fours and a six. Not exactly the performance of a slouch.

But there was no such thing as a slouch on a lovely day on which – hard to believe – 509 runs were scored, except in the field maybe.