After decent use of the Powerplay, the middle of the innings was neatly 'strangled' by the Leicestershire attack, before the end became something akin to one of the more manic scenes from the Keystone Cops. It wasn't especially good and was not very professional, only reinforcing the opinion of most supporters that our T20 cricket is a long way from redemption at this stage.
I'm not taking anything away from Anthony Ireland, an experienced bowler who seems to reserve his best efforts for Derbyshire, but he produced excellent figures of the kind that we can only dream of in this form of the game. Maybe next season...
In fact the bowling was fairly tidy and the spin bowlers all exerted a degree of control that was encouraging in a display that saw only three extras conceded in the innings. Yet it was too little, too late and anything under 150 on a ground like Chesterfield is always going to take some defending.
And so to tomorrow's game against Essex, that sees us welcome back Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who with Wayne Madsen, provides the experience in a young batting line up, which reads:
Borrington, Slater, Madsen, Chanderpaul, Elstone, Hughes, Cross, Wainwright, Palladino, Taylor, Footitt, Turner.
The thinking money would be on Mark Turner becoming twelfth man and it would be nice to report on a good batting effort in the next few days.
As for the visitors, their squad is:
Tom Westley
Nick Brown
Ravi Bopara
Jesse Ryder
James Foster
Ryan ten Doeschate
Greg Smith
Graham Napier
Tim Phillips
Reece Topley
Tom Moore
Matt SalisburyNo David Masters, thankfully, but there's a lot of talent in that squad and Derbyshire will need to be at their best to get anything from the game. Given that prediction of our form at present is a tough call, I am not going down that route. It didn't work today, that's for sure...
At our best, we will compete. Anything less, we will lose.
Can't say any more than that, at this stage.
Durston excepted,it was just another shoddy,sub standard batting performance resulting in a total which never looked liked being enough to trouble Leicestershire. We,ve had some poor one day squads over the years but this crew take it to an all time low.
ReplyDeleteIt really is a shambles to be out thought,out witted and out played by a team that on paper is not much better than ours.What Leicestershire did have was organisation,a collective sense of purpose and a tactical plan the players put into practice and made it work. It,s hard to comprehend just how far and how fast this club has sunk without trace.