Thanks to all those who responded via the blog and through e mails to my piece on "Being a Fan" the other day. It turns out that Derbyshire have at least one follower in Australia, one in New Zealand and another in the USA. All of a sudden I feel like a local...
Thanks also to DCCC Forever for his suggestion of starting a thread on who will be our second overseas player in the Twenty/20. However, at this time, I'm going to decline and leave that one for a little further down the line.
It would be very easy of me to suggest that we should sign Shahid Afridi or Cameron White or Kieron Pollard. Indeed any one of around a dozen names could easily come to my lips, I won't do it at this stage however, for two very good reasons.
One is that we don't know if Derbyshire will have the money for one, or if we do, how much money we have available. There's no point hypothesising about the names above, all of whom would cost serious money, when our horizons may need to be considerably lowered.
The other is that at this stage no one has a clue about who is available. We know, because their players will be in the UK for international commitments, that you can effectively rule out the top Australians and Pakistanis. The World Twenty/20 doesn't finish in the Caribbean until May 16th and then there's suggestions that Sri Lanka, India and possibly New Zealand may be involved in a tournament in Dubai or somesuch. That doesn't leave many options, does it?
With the proliferation of training camps added in, I genuinely don't think there's any point in starting conjecture that will probably come to naught. As I've said before, I'm confident that John Morris will, if the money is available, come up with a very good player for us. I've little doubt that he is perhaps putting out feelers at this stage, but we can all recall premature plans that were dashed by revised fixtures and injuries. Hands up those who remember Jacques Rudolph, Mahela Jayawardena, James Hopes and Mohammad Yousuf?
Having said that, feel free to drop me a line with YOUR choice, DCCC Forever, or anyone else for that matter. I'm always delighted to hear from fellow fans and who they'd like to see in the club colours.
But just remember, there's a lot of factors will have to come into play first.
Don't forget Leslaine Lambert - what might have been eh?
ReplyDeleteMASTERVILLAIN
Peakfan,
ReplyDeleteFrom your knowledge of who is playing where it looks as though South Africans might be the best bet for our second overseas player in the 20/20. They have a few fast bowlers who can bat a bit like the Morkels for two. I suppose the likes of Kallis would be too expensive but I wouldn't mind Duminy. There is now 16 games in the 20/20 and we must 'splash' out a liittle as this competition could be very lucrative if we do well and another disaster if we don't. With only one team in each group of the 40 over competition sure to qualify we have little chance of getting through and the 50 over competition has gone. Gate receipts from Championship cricket are not going to be high so a good 20/20 is a must and I think that we must 'speculate to accumilate' this time round, especially when we will have an extra 2,000 seasts to fill!
DCCCFOREVER