Thursday 6 April 2017

Loughborough UCCE v Derbyshire

Seems a long time since I did a proper match preview, but its that time again!

Derbyshire has announced a 13-man squad for the three-day game at Loughborough, that starts tomorrow.

It sees Daryn Smit and Luis Reece in the squad for the first time and offers several players an opportunity to stake a claim for a place in the proper stuff, starting next week for us. With Hardus Viljoen and Jeevan Mendis we assume fit for duty, tomorrow's game sees players fighting for places in this squad:

Godleman
Reece
Slater
Macdonell
Thakor
Madsen
Smit
Wilson
Hughes
Milnes
Palladino
Taylor
Davis

I have no idea who drops out in that squad, but there would appear a three-way battle for an opening berth between Ben Slater, Luis Reece and Charlie Macdonell, which is no bad thing. Alex Hughes will be keen to impress too, while the four seamers can stake a claim to bowl alongside Viljoen.

There are good options in the squad and that should keep people on their toes through the coming season. The result is largely immaterial, but good individual performances will be on a lot of minds tonight.

Time to get that desktop scoreboard on my computer at work once again...

Can't wait!

5 comments:

  1. As customary for the pre season friendly I'll be there to watch/critique.

    Pre season marks are awarded to players who find time to chat with the handful watching, for players not wearing long sleeved sweaters, and for anyone catching anything at slip in April !

    Let's hope it's competitive, but with a small "c".

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  2. Look forward to your critique mate. Dont forget gloves or it may be Sunday before your hands have thawed enough to type it!

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  3. Flying up the league already Peakfan after Leicestershire's deduction. Third from bottom already!!

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  4. Runaway leaders soon mate ;)

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  5. Apparently it's not a first class match, so I suspect that all 13 might be playing a part at some stage. The one absence of note is Ben Cotton, who hasn't featured in either of the pre-season matches. Unless he has an unannounced injury or illness, this suggests that he's slipped down the pecking order.

    Loughborough look as if they might be a cut above the usual university fodder as they got very much the better of Leicestershire and matched Northants, so may well produce a reasonable test of where we stand against these two. They also provoked the misconduct by Shreck that triggered the points deduction for Leics, so we owe them already - but just how stupid do you have to be to misbehave in a pre-season friendly and get your captain banned for a game that does matter and earn a points penalty?

    If the forecast's right, I think sunscreen might be much more necessary than gloves, so on the offchance that it might not be as warm again until June, I'll probably try to fit a day in as well.

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