Birmingham 167-9 (Pollock 46, Burgess 42, Scrimshaw 3-23)
Derbyshire 170-5 (Wood 63*, du Plooy 57)
Derbyshire won by 5 wickets
It wasn't just the eventual win. It just seemed more lively, more upbeat, even when Birmingham recovered well from the loss of early wickets. Ed Pollock hit merrily, but wickets fell regularly and once again George Scrimshaw caused havoc with the late order as they tried to accelerate, bowling very quickly. Catches were held, bowlers stuck to their task and it was good to see Mattie McKiernan bowl well on his return to the side, removing the danger man Braithwaite, albeit with the worst ball of his spell.
The home side's score looked below par and especially so when Luis Reece took 19 from the first over. Came didn't last long but du Plooy was quickly into his stride and the loss of Reece to a fine catch didn't seem to matter, as the hundred came up in ten overs.
The loss of the excellent du Plooy to what looked a very poor decision threatened to derail Derbyshire, the scoring rate dropping. Yet through it all Tom Wood stood firm. Sixteen were needed from the last two, but three powerful fours ensured a Derbyshire win with five balls to spare, Guest showing a calm head and his usual quick running at the other end.
So in one innings, Tom Wood scored more runs than the previous number three in eight attempts, scoring much more quickly too. It came as no surprise to me, and like I have said before, horses for courses is always the way to go. The disappointment is that it took well paid coaching staff until they were boxed into a corner to work this out.
So well played Derbyshire and very well played Tom Wood. I thought Critch handled his field and bowlers well and there can be few complaints tonight.
Except..
I know we should be grateful for what we didn't have before, but the stream at Edgbaston tonight was awful. They continually got angles wrong, there were no replays and it was a bit of a shambles. They even managed to break with process and zoom in on one of the dozy pitch invaders.
Yet in comparison to the commentary it was brilliant. I have never heard such one-eyed, obnoxious and disgusting commentary in my life as that offered tonight. All of the home side's boundaries were 'hammered' and 'towering' . Those by Derbyshire were 'clubbed' and 'squirted'. The boundaries were 'short' , but only when we started hitting them. The man and woman - no idea who they were - spent half the time talking about the new competition, not commenting on two boundaries by Reece. It was all 'we' need wickets and as Richie Benaud once said, there are no teams called 'we' and 'they' in a commentary box.
When Wood was hit on the pad, sweeping, 'Surely?' came the cry from the commentator, despite it going down leg by a distance.
It was quite frankly a disgrace. I am just sorry that I broke with my normal tradition to listen to it. From the comments on my Twitter feed, many of you felt the same.
Never again.
Anyway, well done Derbyshire. That was more like it. Just think, if someone had earned their money and been proactive two weeks ago, then made a decision to shake things up..
Postscript : many will have seen the news today that Tony Palladino is bring a claim of unfair dismissal against the club, as broken today.
An initial hearing takes place on August 6, with the case to be heard in June 2022.
It being a legal matter, I will neither make nor allow any comments on it on the blog, in the interests of fairness to both parties.
It needn't be again as unlike every other county stream which happily takes the BBC audio, 'Birmingham' seemingly have Bears TV or whatever they called it and seemingly feel they can do it better. News for them - they can't and it was dreadful.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure they have a different set up for the Championship but agree this was very poor although interesting to listen to Paul Smith. Overall a very good performance. Scrimshaw is becoming a revelation and his economy made the difference between 165 and a potential 180 target which might have proved too great. Du Plooy and Wood showed the value of one player with all the shots and the other steadily accumulating. Then Wood took on the leading role.
DeleteIt was an appalling stream and even worse commentary (though to be absolutely honest it was a relief at times not to have Fletcher's snide sarcasm, repetition of old stories and jokes, and ignorance of anything to do with cricket) but what they are trying to do is monetise live streaming _ I think Middlesex is doing it too. By having their own commentary team, they can run advertising on the stream, which they aren't allowed to do if they use BBC commentators. I appreciate the motivation, but the execution of it was shocking. For a county with its resources, it was shameful, but hardly more so than their incompetence at handling a crowd, resulting in the streakers and the pitch invasion at the end.
DeleteA tremendous performance, where we played well as a unit.
ReplyDeleteWood was superb, and kept his cool at the end, while du Plooy, once again, led from the front, and is now the country's leading T20 run scorer this season. Our bowlers stuck to the task, with Scrimshaw again shining.
I did worry towards the end of our innings that we might not make it, as the run rate fell. But Wood and Guest did the business. My only quibble is that we should have accelerated more in the last few overs.
I agree, Steve, with Critch running the show there seemed to be more energy and self belief about the team.
So, let's see more of the same tonight.
Well, what could've been hey!. I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but the change of replacing Billy with Tom Wood should've happened after four games at most, we could all see that so why couldn't the management?. Another really poor decision that leaves you scratching your head.
ReplyDeleteThought we looked so much better with bat and ball, Scrimshaw continues to impress in this format and great to see Wood and Du Plooy in form with the bat. Yes, the commentary pair were a disgrace, I wonder if they were wearing ' we hate Derbyshire ' t-shirts for some bizarre reason, even the Notts commentator this season wasn't too bad. Same team please for Notts and hope the weather holds off. Well done Derbyshire
A good clinical performance that one tends to se the top teams play. Good to see how despite in his 1st T20 of the season...I think...wood remained calm and managed the last few overs. Yes the camera work was poor, jerky movement and missed tracking the ball when it was not wicket to wicket and poor one-sided commentary, from their comments they knew nothing of the Derbyshire players. It just show not everything is bad at Derbyshire as made out by some.
ReplyDeleteWell done critch and the boys, more of the same tonight please.
I watched on mute, which sounds like a good thing, and I missed the 1st 2 overs of our innings, which was definitely a bad thing! One thing that stood out to me was at the end of the match as the players came on to the pitch, Matt Critchley made a point of running half way across the ground to put his arms around and hug Tom Wood. No less than Wood deserved, but its these little things that matter. Maybe Critch can add leadership to everything else he does in the team
ReplyDeleteThe start of a new, Critch - led era, hopefully. An excellent performance. Seems like I was fortunate to miss the live stream, which sounds disgracefully amateurish and totally partisan. Worrying news about Palladino however. I never understood why our most successful and reliable bowler for many years failed to appear last season and then why he seemed to leave the staff abruptly. "Unfair dismissal" is news to all of us I'm sure, bearing in mind the fact I read somewhere that he had retired. As usual, Derbyshire management seem to have withheld the true facts from members and spectators alike. Or have I missed something?
ReplyDeleteLike I said, Unknown (please use a name!) we will leave the 'true facts' for the courts to establish..
DeleteTo be honest, I didn't think there was much different about Derbyshire in this game from most of the others, apart from actually finishing off the job against one of the leading teams in a way they hadn't done in the previous games against Warwickshire and Notts. The game took a familiar course of Derbyshire not quite taking advantage of early wickets and bowling some untidy overs towards the end, and not quite building on a good start when they batted. du Plooy was quite brilliant again, and I'll be astonished if we don't lose him for the RLODC once the 100 teams pick their wildcards - we might also have to start worrying about this for Scrimshaw, as a very quick bowler who is unfamiliar to batters with a knack of taking wickets and good economy could be a very attractive proposition. Wood provided the glue for the innings, though quite what was going through his and Critchley's minds as they let the scoring stagnate was a mystery. I thought Guest again showed an intelligence and belligerence in his play that would justify his promotion above Hudson-prentice. He can't produce the same explosive shots, but Hudson-Prentice will do that wherever he bats, and at the moment we're not getting the best out of Guest.
ReplyDeleteWith the camera work so awful, it was difficult to get any sense of how Critchley managed as he was almost always out of shot. I thought he got the ends wrong for his first two overs and McKiernan's second two, bowling to the short leg-side boundary, and I was worried by how he approached his innings. He didn't come into the game in great form with 6 runs in 3 innings off 17 balls, and his 8 off 15 here was, dare I say, Godlemanesque. It might have been a matter of form, but it looked a little like the captaincy changing how he played. He obviously recognises this, with his joke in interview about trying to play the Bears back into the match, and hopefully will be something to adapt to.
I know you and others who have been banging the drum for Tom Wood will feel vindicated by his performance here, but I recall you saying in discussions about Hosein's position during the Wilson / Smit years that he couldn't expect to be picked without the weight of second XI runs. I didn't particularly agree with that, but as I've said previously, Wood's second XI T20 record is modest. Until the 50 against Notts when he got injured, he'd scored one 50 in 3 seasons and his average and scoring rate this season was slightly poorer than Harvey Hosein's. It says something about his strength of character, and is a pretty remarkable achievement, to come into successive T20 games with no preparation and score as many half-centuries as he has in 3 seasons of second XI T20. But it also says something about why there was such hesitation about picking him.
Agree with all of your first paragraph and that we could lose Leus and George to the Hundred. No one likes pace and bounce and he has both, in spades.
DeleteI thought Briggs bowled very well for them and yes, he could have had the spinner on with the longer legside boundary. But he could argue that in hitting against the (usual) spin they were taking a risk. I thought he bowled well, as Critchley largely did himself.
Wood? Yes, made that assertion re Hosein, but the fact is that weight of runs here was of less relevance. In T20 the speed counts and a bloke who averages 20 and scores them at 130 is more use than one averaging 30 and scores at under 90.
Wood always seemed the right pick for this competition and the RLODC, at the very least.
The question is whether we can afford a player for just one - day matches another year, or he can become an all round option