Place your bets folks...a tame old draw tomorrow, or a bold attempt at an albeit contrived result by virtue of an overnight declaration, a portion of cafeteria bowling and then a declaration setting Nottinghamshire somewhere between 300 and 350 to win?
My call would be that the weather forecast tomorrow will make any contrived finish a near impossibility. It suggests that time will be taken from the game again tomorrow, so it is hard to see how an appropriate calculation of runs v time can be reached. While both sides could really use the win, neither can afford the loss and it is hard to see how you can get a result, unless the skippers are both prepared to gamble. As we've learned from the toss this year, gambling isn't one of Wayne Madsen's strengths, but the win points are a tempting prize for a side that really needs more than draws.
Derbyshire did well to to get close to 400 today, thanks largely to a last wicket stand between Marks Footitt and Turner, further illustration of the battling qualities of this side. Afterwards Nottinghamshire batted steadily and Michael Lumb made a fine century, but from a Derbyshire perspective the main event was Tim Groenewald's 200th first-class wicket, a fine achievement. While less penetrative this year - and less obdurate with the bat, compared to last year - Groenewald is a good cricketer who always gives a hundred per cent and is fit to play more than most of his kind.
187 runs ahead then with a day to go and two innings left in the match after the current one. Should there be a positive result in this game, both skippers deserve the utmost credit for innovation and courage.
I don't see it though. Much as I would love to report on a Derbyshire win tomorrow, my head overrules my heart and says that a draw is the likely result. It shouldn't detract from a largely good performance though, from a side that is slowly but surely finding its feet at this level. yet still with much to do.
Postscript - Essex all out 20? How is a side with that many players struggling so badly. I suspect that Mr Grayson's tenure as coach may end this year and I shudder to think what the Forum would be like were Derbyshire to produce a display of that ilk.
I agree that the forecast tomorrow probably makes any contrivance academic, but why would we want to gamble anyway? It looks as though there's a dry morning when we might gain a couple of bowling points and with the draw points, it'll mean we don't lose ground. On the basis of my brief glimpse yesterday, Notts look a shadow of the team they were a couple of years ago - shame after they've spent all that money cannibalising their neighbours - and a draw keeps them within range, whereas a win would put them 50 points ahead.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to my comments yesterday, there was some movement but that just made some of the shots worse. The ball that got Madsen was a beauty, and looks even better on the LV website, but Chanderpaul and Durston's dismissals were shockers at the time, and even worse on the video. Especially if the ball was moving around more, why were they playing poor one day cross-batted shots against a moving ball so soon after losing a wicket? Durston's whole innings smacked of "I won't be here long so might as well make it count" while it's difficult to work out what Chanderpaul was trying to do. My best guess is that he was trying for a Chinese cut past his off stump, because there was nowhere else the ball could possibly have gone apart from the stumps or the slips. Slater's dismissal simply says he's not savvy enough for this level yet, chipping to a fielder who'd only been moved there a couple of balls before. It looked as though Chris Read saw him play a couple of balls and immediately set the trap. He might have lots of ability but this says to me that he needs more time learning how smart professional cricketers are in the second team before he's exposed again at this level.
So I stand by my comments that the morning's poor batting opened the door to the familiar middle order collapse which duly followed this morning. We lost 7 wickets for 72 runs from 265-2, and once again had to rely on the last wicket to get us towards where we should have been but still short of a fifth batting point, and short of a score that might have pressurised Notts.
In this context, yes, we did well to get near 400 but only because we made such a mess of the middle of the innings. For the third time this season, we had the platform to bury the opposition under the weight of runs, failed to do so, and let the opposition off the hook. Of course I don't have the answers, but from his public statements, neither does Karl Krikken.
The weather in this game, and the pitches against Yorkshire and Surrey probably make the failures to make really big scores academic in terms of wins, but it really is difficult to see now how we're going to get into a position to win one game, never mind the two or three that Karl seems to think will give us a shout.
But at least we're not Essex. Am I the only one beginning to think that it might be worth imagining the least likely thing to happen in one of their games and going and putting a bet on it happening? I won't go any further for fear of deletion, but there's something mightily wrong at that county, given the weight of talent they have at their disposal.
I think you're being a little harsh mate. Slater isn't the first or last player to be suckered into a dismissal and better than him have fallen for the trap.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the shots of Durston and Shiv could have been better, but you're talking fractions of seconds to decide on shots and, on this occasion, they got it wrong. Hard for any of us to say too much about a bloke who averages just under 60 in the first class game though! He gets it right most of the time.
Essex? Glad you stopped where you did, but the root cause, from what I hear, is very poor team spirit.
As we saw last season (and to some extent this) it goes a long way when technique and ability come into question