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- Somerset County Cricket Club played in Division Two of both the County Championship and the Sunday League in 2005. Somerset started at 10–1 to finish Division Two County Champions. Batting seems strong with Smith, Jayasuriya, Blackwell and Trescothick. But the same cannot be said of the bowling, which will find it difficult to dismiss teams twice on the flat Taunton pitch. The first match of the season was against Durham UCCE, which showed how good a batting pitch Taunton is, with both teams scoring well. The first County Championship game was a draw against Lancashire at Old Trafford. The next game was a totesport League game against Warwickshire, which was abandoned as a draw because of rain. Somerset's second Championship game was a comprehensive innings defeat at the hands of Yorkshire, which was followed by another heavy defeat to Yorkshire on the Sunday, and a 9 wicket defeat by Essex in the Championship. They then lost by 8 wickets to the Foxes at Taunton, but on the May Day Bank Holiday thrashed Surrey. On 4 May they were edged out of the C&G Trophy at Round One by Leicestershire in a low-scoring game. They were then beaten by Durham in Stockton-on-Tees in the Championship, their fourth successive loss in the Championship, but continued their good form in the National League with a 16-run win in Edinburgh over the Scots. They picked up their form in the Championship, however, drawing with Lancashire in a rain-ravaged match before travelling to Northampton to beat the hosts Northamptonshire. June started with a draw against Leicestershire, before two losses in the one-day league - to Leicestershire and Kent. Despite the poor one-day form, they could still pull off a four-wicket win against the Australians, however, widely recognised as the best in the world. Form eluded them in the league, though, as they whimpered to a 15-run defeat at the hands of Scotland at Taunton. The Twenty20 Cup started with a confusing loss to Glamorgan Dragons where the scores were tied after 20 overs a side but Glamorgan won on fewer wickets down. However, Somerset got their revenge over Glamorgan five days later, in the middle of a three-game win streak. Then followed a rained-off game and two losses that threatened to send them out of the quarter-finals, but they recovered to beat Gloucestershire by 95 runs in a match where Somerset set a Twenty20 Cup record with their team score of 228 for 5. A stunning triple century from only 255 deliveries from Graeme Smith won them the match against Leicestershire, and they followed up with a win in Northampton to go through to the Semi-Finals of the Twenty20 Cup at the Oval. After not playing in the Championship the following week, they beat Kent by eight wickets in a shortened National League match. Their poor Championship form continued in the last week of July, however, as they went down to Durham by 207 runs. However, despite their poor performances in the two league competitions, they went on to defeat Leicestershire Foxes and Lancashire Lightning on the Twenty20 Cup finals day at The Oval, thus winning the Twenty20 Cup. Two days later, it was back to normal proceedings for Somerset, however. They suffered two narrow National League losses in the space of two days, to Sussex Sharks and Derbyshire Phantoms, before eking out a five-run win over Derbyshire in the Championship. A high-scoring draw with Yorkshire followed, and Yorkshire stayed for yet another high-scoring match - a National League game which Somerset won by two runs. Away from Taunton, however, Somerset couldn't keep up their good batting, and their bowling conceded 696 runs in one innings as Worcestershire beat them by an innings and 56 runs. A victory over Durham in the National League redeemed that loss somewhat, though, and they continued on the winning path with victories over Essex in the Championship and Surrey in the National League. After a week-long break, September began with yet another National League victory, over Warwickshire, before their streak of four victories in a row was broken by Northamptonshire in a drawn game. As reigning Twenty20 Cup champions, they were invited to the International 20:20 Club Championship, where they lost two matches and bowed out at the group stage. Two days later, they travelled up to Chester-le-Street, where a batting collapse led to a five-wicket defeat at the hands of Durham, and they also lost to Derbyshire in the Championship, the first team to do so in three years. (en)
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