Played four, lost four, live on Sky tomorrow evening, against a side in the same position.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, we can't get any worse than having lost all of our games, so you could look on tomorrow as the start of the good times, if you are of an optimistic bent, or one where the frailties of the current set up are exposed to the nation, if you are less positively inclined.
Tomorrow we come up against a batting line up of such quality that their current plight is surprising. If you put it together with our bowling, there would be the nucleus of a pretty decent team, yet their situation mirrors our own and suggests that appearances can indeed be deceptive.
There is a recall for Billy Godleman to the Derbyshire fifteen tomorrow and I won't even try to call a final eleven. Northampton used to be a spinner's paradise but more often favours seam these days, so the wicket tomorrow will be the driver for the final eleven. As I wrote the other day, we have missed another left-hander at the top of the order, but we have also seemed a bowler light. Read into it as you will, but the final eleven will be from:
Slater, MacLeod, Godleman, Madsen, Hughes, Critchley, Smit, Wilson, Viljoen, Rampaul, Sharif, Dal, Brodrick, Ferguson, McKiernan
The home side's squad is as follows:
Levi, Duckett, Cobb, Wakely, Coetzer, Crook, Procter, Prasanna, Kleinveldt, White, Hutton, Sanderson, Buck, Vasconcelos
Fingers crossed we can get ourselves off the mark, albeit against a side that has punched above its weight in this format in recent years.
As always, I wish the boys luck and hope that they acquit themselves well.
No doubt Sky's commentary team will have plenty to say, one way or another.
Northants are a decent team. They got off to a bad start in the Championship but have started to recover - may see this in T20 as well. I hope they stick with McKiernan and reintroduce Dal.
ReplyDeleteHave been to Cheltenham this week and earwigged on the Gloucestershire members forum attended by Richard Dawson who heads up the cricket side there. Interesting thoughts on overseas players (they currently have none in the championship), kolpaks and the drive to push through acadamy players. They made one signing in the summer - Higgins who has done really well for them. Not everyone was happy but I think the point was driven home that youth is the only way forward.
There was also a very good from at the tea interval on wicketkeeping involving Bob Taylor and Andy Brassington. Both were perhaps not surprisingly of the view that the best wicketkeeper should be selected - so for Derbyshire does that mean Smit?
Smit is not actually in the squad Peakfan so I think it will be Wilson I assume captain/keeper. Unless Godleman captains which I think would be foolish for his first game back
ReplyDeletePicking 15 tells its own story. Whoever is picking the team doesn't have any more idea what to do than we do. Mind you, we did avoid defeat at Cutthorpe last night (didn't win either, it was a tie).
ReplyDeleteOne team playing inexplicably badly, the other an inexplicable team playing badly. if there's any reason for optimism, it's that Northants performances appear to be getting worse, whilst ours are improving slowly. The return of Godleman (presumably not included in the squad to carry drinks) will improve the chances of a quick start if he stays in for at least 5 overs, and hopefully his presence will relax Slater and allow him to play a less frenetic innings, and the dropping of Smit removes one of the dead weights in the middle order, though probably the wrong one. Smit often eats up balls at the start of his innings, but if he stays in usually scores at a respectable rate, unlike Wilson for whom acceleration seems to be a historic concept. It's depressing indeed to hear his interview yesterday in which he blamed slow play in the powerplay overs and absolved himself from blame by talking about how difficult is was to score against the spinners.
ReplyDeleteWith Critchley rediscovering some form at 6 (although the squad list suggests he might be back at 3) we have a better chance of posting a competitive score. My biggest concern in the matches against both Notts and Lancs was the flat, joyless body language of the team. Some have suggested that players just aren't bothered and that is patent nonsense - a player who can't be bothered doesn't take the kind of catch that Critchley did, but equally a player and team that was happy would have celebrated it a great deal more than they did. I'm not sure how this can be sorted out in 4 days, but if it isn't, we can expect not just defeat, but public laceration by the Sky team which will be especially vituperative given the (relatively) lavish praise they were giving us last year.