Round Three of the 2026 County Championship

A look back at goings on in round three of the 2026 county championship, starting with a classic match at Southampton. Also a photo gallery.

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Jamie Smith has started the summer with a bang 👊

Top of the charts in Division One 📈

🤯 99 average
💯 Two centuries
🔝 Top score of 166

🤎 | #CountyChampionship

Bad light intervenes in the sole remaining match, the one at Northampton, and that is going to be that for round three of the 2026 County Championship.
#cricket #CountyCricket #CountyChampionship #NorthamptonshirevMiddlesex #NORvMID
Warwickshire win by 41 runs as Zaman Akhtar holes out to Sam Hain off Beau Webster for 35. That leaves only one match still in progress.
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Don't give me hope. I can't take the hope. #Essex #cricket #CountyChampionship
To expand on one element of the above, Middlesex and Northamptonshire are involved in an atrocity of a match where hands will be shaken at five o'clock and no one bar some of the batters who got to boost their averages will remember anything about it.
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Tom Abell hits a four to take Somerset to a two wicket win and him to 101 not out. This has been a superb match, and full credit to the Hampshire ground staff for producing a pitch that has produced a result late on the fourth afternoon of a fixture scheduled to last four days.
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Sonny Baker bowls Lewis Gregory to make it 262-7, 25 still needed and now only three wickets. So long as Abell is still there I make Somerset favourites, but if he gets out anytime soon they will be in real trouble - the are three batters to support Abell, but one wouldn't bet on any of them playing the lead role successfully in this situation.
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Ogborne edges through to the keeper off Baker, giving the ex-Somerset quick his fifth scalp of the innings. Leach joins Abell with 15 needed and two wickets standing. Leach of course has history in tight finishes, notably his role in the Headingley Heist of 2019.
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Lunch on day four, and Somerset are 223-6, needing 64 to more to win with four wickets left. Tom Abell is on 65, and it is on him that Somerset's main hope rests, Lewis Gregory at the other end is 11 not out and there are three tail enders to come, of whom Ogborne scored 38 in the first dig, Leach can hang around and Ball is a genuine no11.
#cricket #CountyCricket #CountyChampionship #HampshirevSomerset #HAMvSOM