Can Derbyshire rise from last season's shocking mediocrity in one-day cricket to justify the comments of Mike Atherton and David Lloyd as their being worth a flutter to do well?
They can, but it needs certain things to fall into place.
Dan Birch needs to find the touch that has served him so well in league cricket to give impetus to the innings, allowing Chris Rogers to play as the innings anchor.
Dom Telo and Rikki Clarke need to be protected from the new ball, enabling them to come in when the field is spread to push the ball around. John Sadler is then important as the man to bat around if the openers fail.
The bowlers need to maintain accuracy above what they showed last year and in the Gloucester game. One bad ball an over equates to 200-plus totals in FP Trophy games.
I think we need to play both Jake Needham and Nayan Doshi to take the pace off the ball and slow the scoring.
Most of all we need to avoid injuries. Already we have lost Greg Smith and Kevin Dean from what would be our first choice one day side. We don't yet know how long this will be for, but Smith is an explosive batsman and very handy bowler, while Dean is still capable of running through sides with a new ball.
We'll know a little more after today, and watch with interest as events unfold at Old Trafford.
A draw was a good result for us there, their team is loaded. Watched Yorkshire last night and didnt see anything that would worry me, hopefully Hoggard and Gough will be missing next week too.
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