All things considered, not a bad day for Derbyshire, though it could have been better.
Chris Woakes' century left the game well-poised, though runs on the board, as in any cricket match, are the most valuable of commodities. We will rue one or two chances and close opportunities that went begging, but, as with any other game of cricket, you simply cannot tell how this is going to go until we take our turn to bat.
Woakes enabled our visitors to go from a nadir of 148-7 to a closing score of 285-8. To be honest, we'd probably have taken that before the toss, but would have hoped to conclude their innings by the close, with expectations - no, a need - to do so promptly tomorrow.
The bowlers appear to have stuck to their task well and our batsmen will be hoping that the post-tea session is indicative of a wicket that has eased from a little early movement.
One thing appears clear at this stage. Barring our making a shambles of our first innings, we're likely to face a last day run chase, bringing back memories of last year against Hampshire. My guess would be that the target will be considerably greater though and we're going to have to pull out the stops to get to a win.
Nottinghamshire overcame early travails at Trent Bridge to earn a healthy closing position of 378-7 and Somerset may well be the most concerned of the bottom three at this stage. Our guys might well be the most disappointed, as a day where we looked to be totally dominant ended up as one where we did pretty well, but no more than that.
Time will tell.
Elsewhere, the first player who I thought "yes please" with regard to signing came on the market today.
Will Smith is that player and the very compact, organised Durham batsman, who can either open or play in the middle order is the sort of cricketer I would welcome at the club. He made a very composed and well organised 80-odd against us last week and has had a steady, if not spectacular season.
Whether he is lined up by a county at this stage it is hard to say, but his experience at Durham, a side he captained to the county championship in 2009, would be more than useful. He's had his share of injuries and he played for Nottinghamshire, but I'd be prepared to forgive that faux pas. He has a proven ability to score runs on northern wickets - not a formality, as many have found over the years - and would be an asset, not just to us but to a few sides.
Worth keeping an eye on that one.
I can,t agree Peakfan. I think it has been a bad day for us from a number of aspects. We can start with the toss if you like and once again we put the opposition in on a fine,warm and sunny day. Tomorrow the forecast is for cloud,which is bound to help the bowlers.
ReplyDeleteSome will argue the ploy nearly paid off and it might well have done had we not dropped vital catches,the sort that would have made a schoolgirl blush. Nearly is not good enough though and the bottom line is Warwickshire are still batting. We may polish them off early,but we will have to bowl much better than we did for a good part of today,Groenewald excepted. With Woakes still at the crease there is potential for Warwickshire to add quite a few more runs,every one of which will do us damage. We should have had them out for well under 200 and the fact we failed was largely down to our own shortcomings. As you say youself,we are now looking at the prospect of a large fourth innings run chase. Not a mouthwatering thought.
I,m by no means convinced we picked the right team either. Wainwright never looked like getting a wicket and given that we intended to bowl firdt,his selection makes even less sense. I accept Notoveryet,s point that Turner has hardly set the world alight this season but then he hasn,t played in recent times. In any case,he could hardly have been less effective than Wainwright,given our need to bowl them out and even if he had gone for a few runs,a couple of wickets early in the day may have made all the difference.
The Hughes swop did not materialise even though all logic suggested it should have done,so we walk into this game with the team that finished the last one. Even if it wasn,t the case,it still smacks of a lack of thought and imagination from the management. We have much to do tomorrow and unless we prove up to it,the remainder of the match may be a painful end to the season.
We'll need to disagree mate. I wouldn't have picked Chesney, as he's had no recent match practice of note.
ReplyDeleteLikewise Turner. I'm not convinced that if the other three can't bowl teams out, he will. Wainwright at least offers a change of pace and potential for late order runs - though I wish it was realised more often.
Too tight to call tonight. Tomorrow we'll have a much better idea of possibilities - we really need to get at least 300 in the first innings for those crucial batting points.
I agree with notoveryet. Alex Hughes appears to lack the sufficient ability required to score a hundred or take a 5 wicket haul in championship cricket. His bowling isn't especially quick, and neither is it especially accurate at that level. It wouldn't have mattered quite so much if Wainwright would have been able to kept the run rate down, but he bowled far too many poor deliveries to keep any sustained pressure on the batsmen. As a result, he lacks the confidence to really give the ball some flight. If we are going to play a spinner to do some stock bowling, Burgoyne is a much better bet, and will probably get more runs than Wainwright too.
ReplyDeletePoynton's wicket keeping let us down for the first time this year, and the seamers failing to utilise the new ball against Maurice Chambers was concerning. Nonetheless cricket games have been won from much worse positions than 285/8, so we need to get the last bowling point and then do our best to match their total, and bowl and field better second time round
I note the ECB have sent Tony Pigott as an observer to Trent Bridge to ensure there's no collusion between Notts and Somerset. Just a shame he didn't notice the clever device by Somerset of having their best bowler sent off for bowling beamers and excessive bouncers, letting Notts cruise towards five points and near certain safety. Tomorrow, Notts will repay the favour, in a similarly subtle fashion, thereby allowing Somerset to acquire five points in an equally unobtrusive manner.
ReplyDeleteActually, my half hour at TB tonight suggested that there is enough spice in the wicket, and a grey morning could see some trouble for Somerset, although Notts are well short of their strongest attack. What's certain, though, is that we have to at least match any Somerset batting points tomorrow after letting Warwickshire off the hook today.
It was interesting today to note that Surrey's chairman is intent on abandoning their quick fix culture. “I would rather it takes two or three years to get out of Division Two and achieved it with our own talent rather than one year with imported talent" he said. Starting with that well-known home grown Surrey talent that is Mark Footitt presumably?
Think you're unfair to Alex Hughes Sam. He has only just finished university and has perforce been a part-time professional to this point.
ReplyDeleteDon't judge him now, but in a couple of years, when he's filled out and been able to work on his game, unhindered by studies. His bowling and batting will both come on accordingly.
I can't think of many lads who would thrive in that situation - plus coming into a struggling team - and I think he's done as well as can have been expected in the circumstances. There's plenty to build on.
It's notoveryet, but it might as well be after today's events. Perhaps the ECB observer was at the wrong ground - there's little point in watching for an assassination when the suspected victim is committing suicide. At least I can stop going on about the Surrey debacle, as the win we should have got would have been no use after this performance.
ReplyDeleteYou had to be there to understand just how gutless, witless and directionless Derbyshire's cricket was today. Footitt is clearly on his way to Surrey, and perhaps we should give them a subsidy to make sure we can take advantage of his frailty next year, but others were just as guilty.
As Surrey are short of a coach, they might take Karl Krikken as well. His inane comments tonight -"Maybe, with hindsight, we stuck with the players that got us up a bit too long rather than playing the youngsters" are in the Paolo Di Canio mould of "not me guv" nonsense. Who is "we"? If you mean "I" say it. Otherwise stop taking credit for the successes if you're not going to take responsibility for the failures.
None of the "youngsters" have been a huge success although their presence might have helped to galvanise the remains of those who "got us up" and whose performances drove the successes against Sussex, Middlesex, and Somerset. Meanwhile, Redfern, Durston etc must be feeling hugely motivated for next year after the way their coach has blamed them.
We've had our fate in our own hands since we beat Middlesex, and have failed. We picked the wrong side against Surrey, repeatedly dropped bonus points that any half-competent side would have taken, and ignored the warning signs against Durham that batting changes were needed. Not many coaches would have argued that "We have stumbled across a formula for winning games, so I can’t see any reason to do anything other than the same things" when you've just seen your team lose 2 out of 3 matches and lose 17 wickets for 119 to lose a match it should have drawn. It's also worth reflecting on the phrase "we've stumbled across..." If that's all we expect from our coach, I can do that just as well. As the Chinese proverb says, even a blind cat sometimes stumbles across a dead rat.
I'm not joining in the Krikken must go frenzy on Falcon's Forum. He's clearly been a key part of the things that have been done right to get us to the stage of being so disappointed at being relegated from Division 1, but there is a basic problem in the preparation, development and leadership of this team. The easy and lazy excuses from earlier in the season - we can't afford better and we're overawed by Division 1 - have been exploded by much of the cricket the team has played in the last few weeks. They haven't suddenly become poor players again in the last few days, and neither should they have been overwhelmed by pressure matches in the last few days given what they have been through since the beginning of August. Pointing the finger at them, and even more pointing the finger at those who haven't been on the field in the last six weeks, is a cheap and nasty shot. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a major question over Krikken's suitability for the role he's in.
Make no mistake about it, if we play as badly as we did today (and most of the rare occasions I've been able to get to matches this season - perhaps it's all my fault?) even Leicestershire will give us a fight next year. I've no doubt that the raw materials are there from the performances I haven't seen, but we need to ask hard questions about whether we have the craftsmen in charge who can shape them to the best advantage. I hope that Chris Grant will be asking them behind closed doors, whatever corporate clichés he comes out with in public.
There's some good points in here notoveryet but none of us are party to discussions that have and will go on behind closed doors - nor have we any right to be.
ReplyDeletePlayers are included and omitted for reasons that may not be obvious to supporters on occasion but make a lot more sense to those making the decisions - the ones whose livelihoods are dependent on them being made correctly.
Logically, they are thus being made correctly, or what seems to be
I'm a senior manager in a large organisation that has been very poor in the past. There have been a lot of improvements, but we also had to make sure we promoted positive messages with the public and bolstered the confidence of our own staff as part of the improvement programme. It didn't stop us telling ourselves hard truths behind closed doors at first, but over a period of time, anyone who didn't promote these messages to each other started to be seen as defeatist and negative. So we all stopped telling the hard truths behind closed doors, and the improvement has slowed. There's nothing wrong with spin for a positive purpose, but what leaders can never afford to do is start to believe their own spin.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, we can't and shouldn't know what goes on behind others' closed doors. At the same time, if you carry on the relentlessly positive messages in public even when no improvement is evident, you just invite ridicule and suspicion that you really don't know what you are doing.
I think this is where Derbyshire are, and I think that after the years, emotional energy and money I've expended supporting Derbyshire, I deserve to be treated as a thinking adult. What I want to hear is that "we know there are problems to be addressed if we're going to learn from this year and come back stronger next, and we'll do whatever we need to do to ensure this." Yes, we have to take it on trust that this is what will happen, but at least we'll know that Chris Grant is seeing the same things we see, rather than hazy phantoms through rose tinted glasses.