Monday musings

There are two classic rock songs that are apposite in reflecting on Derbyshire's defeat yesterday against Netherlands.

Can't Get Any Lower by Glaswegian rockers Gun seems appropriate, while a lyric from Meatloaf's Paradise By the Dashboard Light had a degree of relevance for me as I wrote this blog.

Let me sleep on it...I'll give you an answer in the morning.

The truth is that I was stunned we couldn't beat a team of nine part timers plus a couple of hired Aussie hands, one of them with a Dutch passport. If I had written this last night it would have been in haste and not in any way measured. It is a loss, like a number of others recently, but one that really shouldn't have happened. It's Hereford beating Leeds, Minor Counties Durham beating Yorkshire, David beating...OK, not Goliath, but a reasonably big bloke.

Realistically one of the Aussies had to do something special to force a win and it just had to be Dighton, who suggested talent but never fully revealed his hand in his time with us. Ex-Sussex man Baz Zuiderent also did well for them, while Mark Jonkmann is widely regarded as the fastest bowler outside Test cricket at the age of 24. I'd have thought him worth a trial, as he has to be better than what we have.

As I wrote briefly last night, I'm puzzled as to why Peterson wasn't bowled out and why Durston wasn't bowled at all. Maybe one picked up an injury and the other started with one, but unless that is the case their lessened involvement in the field was just odd. Durston was a staple of Somerset's one day attack in all forms of the game and may well have a lot to offer, but he is coming into a team that is very low on confidence.

I was, as ever, optimistic going into this season and felt that we had a team coming together. I still do, but there has to be some serious discussion after this loss. I'm no psychic, but for me the only surprise in the result, which I'm sorry to say I predicted at the halfway stage, was that it went to the last over.

We now need batsmen to get their heads down and battle through it. Too many seem to go for the big shots and work on the theory that someone else will get the runs. We need bowlers to bowl a line and length and make the opposition work for runs, rather than giving them away, a four ball an over almost obligatory of late. Essex looked like losing their game to Netherlands recently, but showed professionalism to drag themselves back into it. When our visitors needed 45 from the last 5 today, I couldn't see how we could stop them.

Where do we go from here? Simply do the best we can in the T20 and the Championship, try to remain competitive and get a few results. Talk of winning anything at the moment is pointless. They're not bad players, but someone needs to get into their heads and see why decent cricketers, better ones than we've had in some time, are not performing. It needs a brilliant innings from someone, an inspired spell of bowling from another, a terrific catch - something, anything to spark the side back to what they were in April.

Maybe this is the year we at last make a fist of T20. Maybe we will rediscover our mojo in the Championship and make a late surge. In the words of another old song, the darkest hour is just before the dawn.

They're still my Derbyshire and your Derbyshire, but John Morris has a lot to do. It has to be Morris too, as chopping him at this stage would be counter-productive. His contract is up at the end of next season and at that stage he will be judged on his achievements, as he rightly should be. His biggest problem now is that a weak attack is being highlighted by an under-performing batting side in which most players have hit a barren patch simultaneously.

Sorting one of those areas has to be a priority. Sorting both will need to wait at least another season after a winter of further recruitment.