As a warm up for the Ashes, England played a warm up four day game against Essex at Chelmsford, with Sky broadcasting the game and a full house present. Essex won the toss and in an obviously planned move Ravi Bopara decided to bowl first, saying something like "It looks like the sort of pitch to score lots of runs on, but we've got to take 20 wickets, so we'll bowl first".
England began quite quickly, scoring 33 off the first seven overs, before Alistair Cook edged Tymal Mills to keeper Ben Foakes for 18. Mills had some early hustle, getting Cook out with a 92 mph ball and following it up with one that was over 94 mph in the resulting maiden. The incoming Trott and Root began to tame the Essex attack, adding 40 in 10 overs, before Root edged to Tom Westley for 41, 73-2. This brought Kevin Pietersen to the crease and he treated the bowlers with some early disdain hammering 16 off his first 9 balls as the 100 came up on the 22nd over. Trott was the next to fall, edging a rocket from Mills to Foakes to go for 32, and it was fairly obvious by now that England weren't taking this game particularly seriously at this stage.
Pietersen came out attacking after lunch, hitting more boundaries, and greeting Tom Craddock's spin with a straight driven four first ball, but then he drove the ball back to Craddock next ball, who grassed the chance, but he wouldn't have to wait much longer for another chance. KP repeated the shot first ball of his next over, where Craddock took the return catch (49 off 58), England 163-4. Craddock soon had his 2nd, Ian Bell going for a sweep shot, Jaik Mickleburgh at short leg anticipated the shot, moved to his right and flung himself at the ball to take a great reaction catch, 172-5. This brought together Prior and Bairstow to bring up the 200 in the 51st over, but England failed to build any consistency as Prior edged behind for 20 to give Craddock a third. It was soon 212-7 as Saj Mahmood blasted one though Bairstow to bowl him for 23.
This left the unlikely pair of Bresnan and Swann to put together the partnership that would enable England to make a decent score. They didn't try anything stupid and steadily accumulated runs off the bowlers before attacking the bad balls, Swann taking 4 fours off the over against Craddock. Swann was first to 50, from 67 ball (also bringing up the 100 partnership) with 3 consecutive fours off Mills. Bresnan soon followed, his 50 coming from 114 balls. That was pretty much it for the day as England finished 332-7 from 90 overs, Bresnan 55 and Swann 62, Craddock with 3-63 being the pick of the bowlers
