Over 430 runs were scored on the first day of Cumbria’s final NCCA Championship game at Peterborough.
Cumbria won the toss against Cambridgeshire and elected to bat, responding with their best total of the summer and maximum batting points for the first time.
In their 90 overs they reached 342-8 and by the close, from 31 overs, the home county had reached 90-1.
Highlight for Cumbria was a century from the Furness batsman Sam Dutton. He made 104 off 159 deliveries during eight minutes short of three hours in the middle, during which time he struck 13 fours.
Dutton became the first player since 2010 to score two centuries in the same Championship season.
There was controversy in the seventh over of the innings after Ben Walkden had played himself in and was going well, scoring 16 off 21 balls – two fours and a six – when a yorker from Mohammad Danyaal struck the bottom of the bat and seemed to hit the ground before being caught at second slip and he was given out.
Freddie Fellow (33 off 44) and Michael Slack (27 off 52) both got a start before they were out and it was left to Dutton and Matthew Sempill (72) to put on 170 for the fourth wicket to really get the Cumbria innings motoring.
Sempill, with seven fours and a six, was going really well when he hit a ball from off spinner Callum Guest straight back at him and somehow the bowler held on for a superb caught and bowled.
Greg Cameron (21) and Ben Davidson (18) kept the momentum going while there was an unbroken stand of 21 for the ninth wicket between Nico Watt (9no) and Drew Postlethwaite (14no) in the closing stages of the innings.
Guest was the most successful Cambridgeshire bowler with 4-79 from his 24 overs.
In the 30 overs that Cambridgeshire had to bat there was success for Nico Watt when he had William Routledge trapped leg before but the home side still have his fellow opener Wayne White unbeaten on 52. Watt has 1-9 from his nine overs.
