Hildreth's late harvest Somerset's gain

Somerset 376 (Rogers 109, Hildreth 68, Trego 65, Murtagh 5-53) and 202 for 7 (Hildreth 85*, Trego 58, Rayner 4-56) drew with Middlesex 423 (Gubbins 109, Robson 99, Stirling 85, Leach 5-77)
Scorecard

On May 12, 2004, James Hildreth came out to bat against Shoaib Akhtar in a County Championship match. Akhtar was one of the two quickest bowlers in the world, consistently exceeding 90mph. Hildreth was a slightly built 19-year-old playing the second first-class game of his career.

He promptly scored 101 and 72. It was the performance of a singular talent, and marked Hildreth out as a coming man in English cricket. But, somehow, he has remained there ever since. There has been much to laud in Hildreth's batting: he is a player of languid class, who has one of the most exquisite cover drives in the land. He has scored runs, and lots of them: 14,039 in first-class cricket, to be exact. These have never, though, been enough to entice the England selectors.

Hildreth has a legitimate claim to being the pre-eminent batsman of his generation never to win international selection: his first-class average of 44.71 is better than any other Englishman established on the county circuit not to win a cap.

But when Hildreth has been spoken about, the discussion is less of the cricketer than the caricature. He has been called artful but flaky, a harvester only on Taunton's benign tracks, and ropey against the short ball. There have even been whispers that he is a man who prefers the easy life in Taunton to the strains that would come with playing for England.

It is a claim that Hildreth could not refute more strongly. "I get up every day desperate to play for England," he said after helping secure a draw for Somerset at Lord's. "The aspiration will always be there. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning."

Neither does he think the other charges against him are fair. In particular, Hildreth is bemused by the suggestion, recycled for years, that he is vulnerable to the short ball. "I find that quite strange. I've never experienced that during an innings or even at the beginning of an innings. I've always felt comfortable with the short ball, it's never been a particular issue. It's never been used as a tactic against me."

He reckons that "potentially runs count for a little bit less" on Taunton's lush batting tracks, and it is true that he averages 50.35 at Taunton but ten runs fewer away from Somerset. Yet Hildreth has four centuries at Trent Bridge, a riposte to those who suggest he is vulnerable to the moving ball.

Somehow Hildreth's moment has never quite come. After a stellar 2010, when he scored seven first-class centuries, he had a fine winter captaining the England Lions, and seemed primed for Test selection. But he averaged just under 40 in the County Championship in 2011: hardly a bad season but enough for the England selectors to ignore him, consigning Hildreth to sumptuous run-making in the shires instead.

"I've only been consistent this year and the year before - I've been a bit up and down previous to that," he said, in blunt assessment of a 14-year career.

It has taken Hildreth long, perhaps too long, to blossom in the way so many hoped and expected. But blossom he now has. Since the start of last summer, Hildreth has made 2184 runs at 60.67 apiece. To see him batting at Lord's was to see a man in complete control of his game, unperturbed by all bowling and at ease with himself.

"I'm just comfortable. No hype, nothing major, just comfortable with what I'm doing," he said. "I've got to the stage where I think it's an effective technique and if I can have trust in that there's no reasons why I can't consistently score runs." In years gone past, Hildreth admitted he had been "too desperate to score runs and worried about external stuff going on, like targets, rather than trusting my method."

Hildreth remains convince that method could work in Test cricket too. "I've always felt that. All I can do is wait, score my runs and keep knocking on the door. Hopefully I'll get a call-up."

Here there was plenty of Hildreth's style, encapsulated in two silken off drives from consecutive balls off Ollie Rayner. He advanced balletically to the first ball and stayed in his crease to the second, but the result was the same: a sweet ping emanating from his bat while the ball raced up the Lord's slope and over the boundary rope.

But mostly this was an innings that defied the lazy Hildreth caricature. For Somerset, it needed to. A game that had seemed to be sleepwalking to a draw was imbued with life as Tim Murtagh snared both openers with the new ball. Rayner induced Rogers to edge behind soon afterwards and, just when Hildreth and Peter Trego seemed to have eradicated all danger, Rayner had Trego caught at square leg and claimed Lewis Gregory first ball, poking to slip.

Rayner is an orthodox offspinner who embraces his limitations, but there was nothing humdrum about the delivery that accounted for Ryan Davies two overs later. The ball spun viciously through his gate, as he attempted an extravagant flick to the legside, and uprooted his leg stump. Rayner screamed with joy in the belief that he had ripped open the match.

Not on this occasion, not with Hildreth in this form. The only shame was that bad light curtailed his innings, depriving him of a first century away from Taunton since the end of 2013.

Marcus Trescothick's fantastic early season form has led to idle talk in the west country that he could break Harold Gimblett's record for most first-class runs for Somerset, of which he is now just under 4000 runs shy. But he is not the only one who could do it: another 4000 runs back, and nine years Trescothick's junior, lurks Hildreth.