GM stars off to a County Championship flyer

In between rain and snow showers Gunn and Moore's cricketers have made a good start to the Specsavers County Championship.

Ben Duckett has the highest score of the season with the unbeaten 282 he scored for Northamptonshire against Sussex, easily surpassing his previous career-best.

Another man notching up a new career-best was Durham's Jack Burnham, whose 135 against Surrey was a maiden first-class century and after an outstanding U19 World Cup for England, he has marked himself down as one to watch already.

Daniel Bell-Drummond was unable to even get started in Kent's first game of the season as all four days against Worcestershire were abandoned but he made up for lost time with scores of 124, 84 and 86 not out in subsequent matches as Kent find themselves in third place in Division Two.

Wayne Madsen hit scores of 150 and 97 for Derbyshire while Gloucestershire's Chris Dent won the race to 400 runs for the season thanks to a couple of centuries and a half-century.

With places in England's batting line-up available, Yorkshire pair Adam Lyth and Alex Lees pressed their cases with centuries against Hampshire and Nottinghamshire respectively, with James Vince - now captain of Hampshire - making 119 against the reigning champions to keep his name in contention.

Middlesex's Dawid Malan and Nottinghamshire's Chris Read are the other GM representatives to have already struck three-figure scores.

Malan made 121 against Hampshire and Read 101 against Yorkshire in a game that went down to the wire before it was drawn.

And elsewhere, GM have been busy in Australia where Jake Carder, Jake Weatherald and Jason Sangha have signed new deals.

Sangha recently became the youngest player to score a century on U19 ODI debut, beating the previous record-holder by more than two years.

Weatherald recently starred for South Australia in the Sheffield Shield final and Carder is a player of some promise who was recently named as the WACA Young Player Of The Year.

© Cricket World 2016