Northamptonshire 255 (Hughes 4-57, Palladino 3-25)
Derbyshire 60-2 (Hughes 38 not)
Honours fairly even at Northampton today, with Derbyshire letting the home side off the hook from 170-8 to their final tally. The early loss of Billy Godleman and Wayne Madsen could have precipitated a collapse, but Alex Hughes followed earlier fine bowling with a lively knock.
There was another immaculate bowling spell from Tony Palladino and an opportunity to build on this tomorrow.
No time for more from me today, after a long day, but I will be back in greater detail tomorrow.
This is completely off topic but think it's important to bring to people's attention. According to the club 60% of members who claimed tickets for the Yorkshire T20 match at Chesterfield didn't bother to attend. Shame on them this is such appalling behaviour. The club estimate it cost them £10,000. Looks like either this match won't be included in the membership package or will have to pay a deposit which will be refunded on attendance.
ReplyDeleteSo much for my comment just before the start yesterday that for once the Derbyshire side almost picked itself, with Andersson recalled by Middlesex, and Ferguson left out as part of the agreement with NZ. Although I thought the Northants total was probably a bit below par for the pitch, thanks to some awful batting in the middle order, it was in truth a fairly shoddy performance by Derbyshire which would have been punished by a better side.
ReplyDeletePalladino bowled beautifully throughout, but the rest was a bit of a mixed bag. Viljoen had one excellent spell but otherwise was the usual curate's egg, with some extraordinary wides in the mix. Rampaul bowled well but didn't really threaten to take wickets, whilst Hughes was in large part the beneficiary of batsmen who didn't seem to take him seriously, and certainly didn't bowl as well he did against Glamorgan. The main issue, though, was the fielding. Catches were dropped by Dal, Hosein and Wilson, only the latter being really expensive, but compounded by some untidy wicket-keeping (apart from a stunning dive to stop a Viljoen wide down the legside), erratic ground fielding, and poor returns. The unlikely stand-out was a stunning boundary catch by Rampaul but otherwise it was pretty ragged.
One bugbear of mine is the absurd habit of fielding sides when they have an established batsman (Zaib in this case) and a rabbit (Sanderson) of dropping the field for the batsman to offer singles early in the over, and then bring the field up for the last couple of balls to try to stop him taking the strike. A batsman in Zaib's position is always under pressure to farm the strike, avoid losing their own wicket, and find ways of scoring. This tactic removes one of those pressures and simplifies the others. Rather than carrying on doing what has got the bowling side to that point, there's a complete change of tack, the energy drains out of the fielders, the concentration of the bowlers wanes, and so often crucial runs are scored. It hardly ever works, and here it allowed Northants to add 43 for the last wicket. Zaib took advantage in a big way yesterday, and Derbyshire just looked dopey, particularly when Godleman brought on Madsen to try (unsuccessfully) to stop the flow of runs. Lace and Hughes played well through to the close after another poor dismissal for Madsen, but it was galling that more or less all they managed to do was eradicate the last wicket partnership.