If they had been offered the opposition being 238-8 at the close before today's start I am sure that they would have taken it willingly. There will be tinges of disappointment, with Kent recovering from 174-8, but that could perhaps be seen as a positive. Is the wicket easing?
Winning the toss is important and Wayne Madsen called correctly at the start of play. From there you have a chance to dictate the play and any under-performance has to be taken on the chin as your own fault. The four seamers, nicely led by Tim Groenewald, all did a job with varying levels of parsimony and if we can finish off Kent in the first half hour tomorrow there will be few complaints.
Only two concerns for me, looking on from afar. One was that we gave away more extras than of late (30), something that I hope won't come back to bite us. I was also surprised that it took as long to give David Wainwright a bowl and that Wes Durston, quite often a man with a golden arm, didn't turn his over. When wickets were falling regularly there was no need, of course, but when a couple of batsmen get into the groove a change of pace can often bring dividends.Coles is a good cricketer and already has a first-class ton to his name. Let's just hope that he doesn't go on to a second tomorrow.
What we need to do is to stop Kent getting too many more batting points (250 is likely, but we need to keep them under 300) while it will then be down to our guys to bat for as long as possible. These are the sort of games where you hope your overseas star turns up in peak form and that the players all dig in. Hopefully that will be the case tomorrow.
In closing, one observation about the two sides that took the field today. Both clubs have taken a contrasting route to success. Derbyshire had only one player (Wes Durston) over 30. Kent only had two under it, with six of their side in their mid-thirties. The average age of Kent's side is 31, while that of Derbyshire is 26.
The point? None at this stage, but curiously the best two batsmen for Kent were their two youngest players.
Curiouser and curiouser...
We really should be batting now and chasing under 200. The day was far from a disaster,but there is no doubt we have let them off the hook. An old failing of ours,though in fairness we don,t do it anywhere near as often as we used to.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn,t the best of days for Johnson,though some wayward bowling did him few favours. In between times we bowled quite well and to some extent justified Madsen,s decision to insert them.
The pitch is one for seamers,as most have been so far this summer. The selection of Wainwright was not one of Krikk,s most inspired decisions,particularly as we were obviously going to bowl first,given the choice. By the way Peakfan,Madsen didn,t win the toss. He just flipped the coin.
Looking at the wider picture,a positive result in this game looks extremely unlikely,give the crap weather forecast for the weekend. All we can realistically do is finish Kent off early today and crack on in persuit of some batting points. Starting this game a day after the others has not done us any favours,as Wednesday will prove a much better day than Sunday is likely to.
What a shower! We let their
ReplyDeletenumbers 9, 10 & 11 put on 91,then
our numbers 1,2,3,4 & 5 can only
manage 51 between them!
Apalling!
Promotion candidates? Don't make
me laugh! As second-raters, we
only deserve to be in the second
division!
Does our batting coach actually
do any coaching - not many signs
of it today (or over the last few
weeks)!
Oh lackaday!!!
I'm sure Peakfan will give us a positive element in the day's play, but I have a nasty feeling that this is going to be the rest of the season for us.
ReplyDeleteWe could say it was a bad day at the office, or that we need to get some momentum going after the ridiculously long close season in June and July, but in reality, this run of batting form started 10 weeks ago after the game against Essex, when I was foolish enough to say that I saw the strut and swagger of champions about Derbyshire. Since then (ignoring the almost unmitigated disaster of t20) our championship batting has been 902 runs for 42 wickets, averaging barely 20 per wicket across four games. Take out the one creditable performance against Leicestershire, and it's only a little over 17 since the middle of May.
There's no magic sponge for something we all knew was going to be vulnerable but over-achieved in the first few matches, but in this context of sustained batting failure, I find it ever more extraordinary that Chesney Hughes has only been given one innings and didn't even get the chance against Australia A to find a touch of form. I say it again, but in a poor year last year, he managed two big centuries. He's not a banker by any means, but can hardly do worse than what we've now seen.