Hello again!

Buenos dias senors/senoras. It's good to be back.

Mind you, not quite as good as being in sunny Estartit for the last eleven days. Quite why the Spanish have never taken up cricket with that climate is beyond me. We never saw a cloud for ten days, then one brisk tropical shower that saw a few people leave the beach but the rest simply lie back and enjoy it. Nor, for that matter, did we see any games of cricket going on. Plenty of paddle ball, volleyball and, of course, football, but nothing else.

To be fair, on that beach, with miles of golden but soft sand, I reckon I'd have been deadly, certainly unhittable. Pitch it in front of the batsman and watch it plop gently at his or her feet, bounce and hitting the ball but a figment of the imagination. I bet Graeme Welch hasn't thought of that one yet, none of this double bouncer nonsense...

Anyway, enjoyment of the holiday was slightly tempered by Derbyshire's form over the period, when we lost to Surrey in the Championship and to Worcestershire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire in the T20, before beating Lancashire at Chesterfield in the latter tournament.
It was disappointing and equally so to see the knives out in some quarters yet again.

For me, the Warwickshire loss was one of those things. Nine in ten you'd expect Langeveldt to take you home in such situations and this time he didn't. A boundary wide down the legside and then a six off the last ball saw our hopes fade, but it doesn't make us a bad team. Indeed, the way we fought to defend a fair total was impressive.

Against Leicestershire we went down to an innings best described as an "every dog has his day" affair, as Will Jefferson did something he has rarely done before and simply slaughtered us. Chasing down over 200 is always a tall order, even on a small ground like Chesterfield, and we posted a decent tally but not enough to turn things around.

The disappointment for me was the Worcestershire game. By no stretch of the imagination could they be called a good side, and I suspect that this game may be the one that will come back to haunt us. The batting just didn't come off and then Jaques gave them the flyer that we needed to prevent.

The Lancashire game then became a genuine "must win." I managed to catch the last twenty minutes in the so-called "business centre" of the apartments, also known as two computers, side by side in the lobby. We did the business when we bowled thanks primarily to the excellent Tim Groenewald, but the top order wobbled once more and we were indebted to some common sense batting by Garry Park and Robin Peterson to take us to the brink, then a few clubbing blows from Messrs Clare and Sadler to take us home.

It is good to see a talented player like Clare emerging from a year or so of serious injury, yet surprising that some Derbyshire fans still think he's simply out of favour, looking at 606. After such an injury, the last thing he needs is to come back, bowling half-pace and getting tanked around the ground. If he doesn't bowl till next season it is fine by me, as long as he's back for the long haul.

Of course, the crippling injury situation is making things very hard for John Morris and the season-long absence of Graham Wagg, Clare and Ian Hunter, together with the loss of Tom Lungley with a broken arm and Mark Footitt has been aggravated by the selection of Atif Sheikh for England Under 19s. It leaves Tim Groenewald and Steffan Jones as the only fit seamers in the club, yet it is wholly unfair to lay the blame of their injuries at Morris' door.

Lungley did well on loan at Lancashire last season and has done well enough, without being spectacular, this year. I'll not defend his poor fitness record over his Derbyshire career, but over the past two years he has been better than others around the country. His broken arm, sustained when batting at the non-strikers end, could not have come at a worse time for a player wanting to prove himself worthy of another deal.

Ian Hunter has not played this season with knee problems, but again, this happens and Morris could equally have got lucky. The bottom line is that there was no one BETTER available in the close season. We could have got someone fit who took no wickets, but Hunter has shown himself a decent county bowler in recent years and was, in any case, due to start the second year of a two-year contract. The thinking money would be on this being his last, but the county game is hardly littered with talented seamers who can't get a game at their county and we're hardly going to win a bidding war if a highly rated prospect fancied a move.

The reality is that the modern game puts way too much pressure on joints and muscles, especially the T20, with the required dives and slides. Get one of those wrong and you have a problem, as Simon Jones knows only too well. While on holiday I re-read John Shawcroft's superb book on Derbyshire's 1936 Championship side, Local Heroes. In the book, he highlights the fact that 9 players played 26 or more of the 28 matches, an astonishing feat of endurance and fitness, but also very fortunate. The game was less physical in the field at that time and diving much less common than today. If a bowler simply has to bowl and field third man, throwing in from time to time, there is less likelihood of injury than if he is throwing himself around like a goalkeeper in a penalty shoot-out.

Even at that time Derbyshire members were moaning about Bill Copson's poor fitness record, yet he went on to have an outstanding season after several years of constant problems where he missed a lot of matches.

To expect a bowler, in particular, to play 16 four-day games, 16 high-intensity T20s and a similar number of forty over matches is unrealistic to the extreme. Something has to give in even the best prepared of physiques. When a strikingly fit man like Steffan Jones says that it is too much, people need to listen. Bowlers need a rest and Morris' pre-season plans revolved around rotating bowlers to keep them fresh, plans cast asunder by events.

The T20 hopes are still very much alive, but there's little leeway for further loss. I'll look at the possibilities in another piece. The Championship hopes, sadly, appear to be gone after the Surrey loss and would appear to require a run of unprecedented success to get back into the mix. The bowlers did well against Surrey, but poor batting on the second morning and early afternoon cost us dearly. Had we got close to their first innings, the injuries of the visitors would have mitigated against a win, but it was asking a lot to chase down 400 in the final innings.

Still, there's now a break for the Australian game. Given that Jones, Groenewald and Peterson are rightly being rested for that one, I'm intrigued as to who is actually going to bowl for us.

First three seamers to get to the ground on Thursday seem to be in poll position for me...