Were county cricket a film script, or novel, my guess is that this year's Derbyshire county championship campaign is brought to you by the pen of John Grisham, or Agatha Christie. Maybe even Roald Dahl, because there have been more than a few tales of the unexpected...
A bit of Barbara Cartland would be good, where you know everything will be alright in the end, come what may, but only a fool would predict the outcome in Swansea tomorrow. The home side must fancy their chances though, 122 runs ahead with seven wickets left. The ball has been turning and will turn, but with the four spinners in the game a combined age less than that of our county legend and president, Edwin Smith, one wouldn't expect one of them to run through the opposition.
Once again, being a perfectionist at heart, I would have to question why a position of dominance at 357-5 allowed our opponents back into the game, with an effete slump to 362 all out. Also why, of our first six wickets, two were squandered to run outs. In four-day cricket that is pretty poor and, given that both involved Gary Wilson and he ran himself out calling for two, he has to accept at least some, if not all of the responsibility tonight.
He previously batted well, as did most of the top order, but the kudos tonight go to Alex Hughes. He battled back from a lean spell with an innings of character and skill, one that should have been bigger still but for the mix up with Wilson that cost him his wicket. It was an innings that came at the right time for him, coming into the T20 in which he will again be a key player.
The home side looked in trouble second time around, with wickets for Matt Critchley and Hamidullah Qadri, but Usman Khawaja batted well with Kiran Carlson to steer them to a very handy overnight lead.
I would guess that we will be left chasing around 275 tomorrow, which won't be easy, but runs have been proven to be possible and there is enough talent in the Derbyshire side to make a fist of that.
Sometimes I think they lack a little self-confidence in key situations and need to tell themselves they can do it. There is and has proven to be talent and swagger within the ranks.
Tomorrow would be a good time to show it.
Postscript - I have seen the footage of the run outs now. Hughes was running to the danger end and would have made it easily. Wilson turned his back on him. For me, that is poor running and cricket from Wilson and very much his fault.
Well done to Hughes and some other good scores too. Nice to see Critchley do well at 7. I always said he was a 7/8 not a 5. At this moment in time anyway. His attacking style for me is more suited to a role lower down where he has freedom to express himself. Not as a top 5 where I expect all my top 6 to be able to “dig in”. Run outs unforgivable. Dave Fletcher didn’t seem impressed with Hughes. I didn’t hear the Wilson one. 5-5 is a shambles. Absolute joke. Seen it so many times. Have them on the rack and we let the foot off the accelerator. It happens almost every game. Today is happened twice. Got them 3 down. I think we really lack that ability to kill a team off. We seem to get into promising positions a lot with vat and ball. When other teams get us into a tough situation we seem to crumble or the other team have that killer instinct. Whatever way you look at it. We struggle to finish it off. I think we have a lot of potential but we don’t have a winning mentaility. Heads drop. Talking stops. Our tail needs a lot of work for me. Palladino been decent this season but how often does out tail wag compared to our opponents. Anyway, if we lose this tomorrow we only have ourselves to blame. Batting for another hour today and getting another 50 runs would have made it a different story. .
ReplyDeleteCertainly agree with some of what you've put Mark. We WERE in a really at position at 357-5 and another 50 runs could have made all the difference.
ReplyDeleteDidn't see the wilson run out,but hughes certainly apeared to be at fault for his.At best it was risky,unless both batsman were already attuned to taking very tight singles,which wasn't the case on that occasion.
I also agree that we are getting in some very promising positions in some games,and seemingly not pushing on from there.
However,where i differe from you is that on occasions last season we were losing games we perhaps could have saved,whereas this season we aere losing/drawing games we could have wo. From my point of view that is progress of sorts,and hopefully by putting ourselves in these positions more often ,we will build the mental strength to turn potential losses more often into draws and wins.
At the moment its as frustrating as hell,but i think we are moving in the right direction. I'm sure the players will be hurting as much as we are.
For the third match in succession, a poor session on the third day turns us from near-certain winners, to very probable losers. Comedy rather than thriller is the best analogy for Derbyshire's cricket at the moment, being bowled out by a Phil Collins song title, elements of Monty Python (Wilson and Critchley for the Ministry of Silly Walks?) and most of all Laurel and Hardy. It's certainly another fine mess they've gotten us in. Apart from the outside chance of a Glamorgan collapse in the first hour (never to be discounted for a team as poor and weakened further by injuries) the likelihood is that the game will be out of our reach by lunch time, and that by some stage we'll have to bat for the best part of 2 sessions to save it.
ReplyDeleteIt's all very well trotting out the same old tropes about seeing improvement etc, but the likelihood reality is that by the end of today, we will have lost or narrowly avoided defeat in three successive championship games against two poor sides that we would have expected to beat at the start of the season, even before they were weakened further by injuries to key players, and will be in the bottom group in the division involved in another fight to avoid the wooden spoon. With a resurgent Leicestershire to come and Northants showing signs of waking up, we could be bottom when we start the T20's.
In amongst the farce, Hughes' innings got a bit overlooked. I would argue that he's very lucky to have still been in the team to make it, and it didn't look like the most fluent and confident of centuries from the snapshots I've seen, but it took plenty of guts and determination to achieve it. I know that this is what his advocates love about him, and they would doubtless argue that this was why you keep him in the team. You could of course use that as an argument for never dropping anyone who has achieved in the past. I'd suggest that this might be part of the problem Derbyshire have. Part of the squad know that they are automatic selections regardless of current performance, and the other part know that they will be dropped after a couple of poor performances or just because one of the favourites is coming back in. It's perhaps telling that this is an exact replica of last season for Hughes -a poor first half with his form and confidence deteriorating and then a gritty, determined century at the end of June at a point when he's facing losing his place. Perhaps that's the stimulus he and others in the team need, that no-one is guaranteed a place based on their history but only on their current performances.
Two images from yesterday will stick with me. One was the unadulterated exuberance and delight of Godleman's celebration of Hughes' century. From a normally very reserved and undemonstrative man, this was indicative of how he sees Hughes, and the actions of a leader. The other was Gary Wilson second-guessing Hughes' call for a single and then turning his back and grounding his bat to make sure that he survived and Hughes was the one to go. It was poor batting, poor thinking, poor leadership, and most of all the selfishness of one has benefitted more than most from selection on reputation alone.
Like you, I think it's obvious that it's Wilson's fault and I'm surprised there's so much chatter about it. There's a view from some of those watching it live that you can't see the fielder on the video footage, and that it was Hughes' fault for taking the run. To me, that misses the point. It might have been a poor call but it was his call and he was running to the obvious danger end. Wilson shouldn't have been ball watching in the first place but took a step towards Hughes anyway, encouraging Hughes to think he was coming. He then realises that Hughes can't turn and that he will be in trouble at the striker's end so turns and grounds his bat to strand Hughes. It might have been forgivable if Wilson had been the established batsman and made a judgment about the best interests of the team, but this was definitely one in the best interests of Gary Wilson, and poor on every level.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what you thought of the Wilson run out, but I'm at odds with the majority again, which seems to think that Wilson was responsible. Both were responsible to a degree as it was obvious from their jazz dancing that that no-one was calling, but on the second run, Wilson is jigging about waiting to see if Critchley is coming back, Critchley turns a few yards past the stumps and comes sprinting back, encouraging Wilson to respond before Critchley suddenly slams on the brakes just past the stumps and strands Wilson. I don't think Wilson would have left his crease if Critchley had said no or not started to sprint. The comedy series would have been complete if Alex Hughes' drop had been captured as well.
Top order shot out in 2nd innings for less than 90, although "top" is probably transgressing the trades descriptions laws. 3 ducks. Crumbling to predictable defeat against the worst team in Division 2 (bar us). How much lower can Derbyshire fall ? Why do they give up when things get tough ? Why doesn't the coach have the decency to resign - he cannot motivate them. On paper they are promotion contenders. In reality wooden spoon candidates yet again.
ReplyDelete