McDermott leaves...

Some time between last September and this March, Dave Houghton must have walked under a ladder, broken a mirror and hung a horseshoe upside down on his office wall.

You would struggle to script the stuff that has befallen Derbyshire this year.

We now hear that Australian wicket-keeper batsman Ben McDermott has had to return home, having been recalled by Cricket Australia. His only appearances for Derbyshire thus a couple of first team four-day games and a second team T20.

I don't quite get the rationale of recalling a bloke for a training camp when he could be getting valuable experience on overseas wickets, but such is the way of international cricket these days. They play five T20 matches in the Caribbean in July - call me old-fashioned, but might not playing T20 be a good way to warm up for that? 

Coming on top of the return home from injury of Billy Stanlake, which was also unlucky but an ill-judged signing in my book, the Head of Cricket has major headaches ahead of the T20.

Does he now go with his two available overseas bowlers, Logan Van Beek and Dustin Melton? Can he find another available player who would IMPROVE (deliberate capitals) the squad? Can he take twenty years off Dominic Cork overnight?

I have been critical of him in recent weeks and I haven't found it easy. He is a very open man, hard to dislike, easy to respect for his many achievements in the game.

Pre-season, his check list must have given him question marks over the potential and performance of young bowlers, who to be fair have all responded handsomely. Ben Aitchison, Mikey Cohen, Sam Conners and Fynn Hudson-Prentice  have all improved and look really talented prospects. Bowling teams out, for all their inexperience, hasn't proved an issue. 

He would have had no concerns over his top four batsmen, where Messrs Godleman, Reece, du Plooy and Madsen have pretty much guaranteed runs in recent seasons. I have compared them previously to the Barnett, Bowler, Morris and Adams quartet of yore, not yet there but offering a reliability seldom seen in the intervening period. 

As it has turned out, only Madsen, averaging 35, but with a highest score of 76 has come close to expectations. He hasn't gone on to big scores, but has got going and is around the 500-run mark.

Few would have expected the travails of the others. Godleman averaging 25, du Plooy under 18 (barely double figures if his 98 against Worcestershire is taken out of it) and Reece under 14.

You don't have to look too far then to understand why we have struggled as a team. Matt Critchley and Harvey Hosein have done a wonderful job, each averaging over fifty, while Brooke Guest has emerged and averages a useful thirty. Yet when five and six are doing so well, it is usually indicative of the top four failing to do so. 

Batsmen do slip in and out of form and anyone who has played the game will affirm this. What is unusual is that three of the top four have done so at the same time and they have three half centuries between them in 34 innings.

Why it has happened is the moot point. Reece has had an injury and I maintain is being asked to do too much, Godleman has too often played in one-day mode and du Plooy's early innings reluctance to get forward has seen bowlers pitch it up for a good chance of leg before.

All will surely come again. They are too good to not do, but you wouldn't have put money on such a collective loss of form by three of your top four.

Which means that Houghton is under pressure. He has to be, because sport is a results - driven environment and we haven't got them. As I have referred to many times, you also need your share of luck and each of those batsmen has had poor decisions against them this year.

Yet for all his articulate skills as an intelligent man, Houghton is doing himself no favours. Claims after the Warwickshire game that we are playing 'the worst cricket in the country' and that he 'can't put his finger on why' are not helpful to players or staff. Is he talking to them? For that matter, are the club board? They can't go around the ground at present, but will  see the comments on here and social media. People are not happy and at some point a decision has to be made, like it or not. 

They could have let Mal Loye take the remaining red ball and RLODC games and see how he does, leaving Dominic Cork with the Vitality Blast. It would allow at least one potential applicant to audition for the role. I just hope the board doesn't ignore it and hope it goes away, as it isn't good enough. As board members, supporters or members, if you accept mediocrity, you're on the road to nowhere. 

The Vitality Blast is massive for this club. Had Stanlake stayed fit, his record in the format might have made him a force to reckon with, even though the odds on his maintaining fitness were never good, perhaps slightly less than mine. Had McDermott been able to play, chances are he would have played two or three innings to live long in the memory and at the same time win games. I don't think he will make the four-day runs of Jones, Di Venuto and Rogers because his technique isn't the same. Then again, Adrian Kuiper wasn't a four-day player, but you would have him in any one-day side. 

Chances are that we have to go with what we have now. Getting people here and quarantined will be a major challenge. Unless we take someone on loan, which didn't work last time, with Darren Stevens and Boyd Rankin. If they aren't in one club's one-day plans, isn't there a reason for that? 

On the only bright side, it affords opportunity for some to make a reputation, others to restore theirs.

Time will tell who does so. But for your correspondent, this season has to be seen as a turning point.

Whoever is in charge next year, we either need to bring in overseas players who enhance and improve the side and its morale, or forget them and use that money to bring a top county player or two from elsewhere.

Unlucky or not, you cannot avoid the fact that overseas recruitment has failed this year.

I would love to be proved wrong in the weeks ahead and dearly hope that I am.