Trouble at mill...

It looks increasingly as if Graham Wagg has jumped, if not from the frying pan of Derbyshire cricket, then certainly into a boiling hot tub floating down a raging lava flow at Glamorgan.

Wagg signed for Matthew Maynard at the end of last season and now finds the latter usurped, in a move worthy of the Night of the Long Knives, by Colin Metson. I would be very surprised if their recent (and very successful) overseas player Mark Cosgrove accepts being a bit part player for the T20, while James Dalrymple will surely move to pastures new after the manner of his replacement by Alviro Petersen. The whole process has been done with near gangland ferocity.

What appears to have been overlooked in all of this is that Tom Maynard, the Welsh side’s talented young batsman, can hardly be expected to stay after the manner of his father’s removal from post. Matt Maynard was offered a demotion to coach, working under Colin Metson, which made his position close to untenable. His subsequent resignation was hardly a surprise.

Given that Ryan Sidebottom left Yorkshire after they replaced his father Arnie as coach, while Gary Ballance departed from the County Ground shortly after his uncle, David Houghton, was sacked by Derbyshire there is precedent. I know that I would find it impossible to work for any organisation that treated my father so shabbily, so the fall out from this one could be far greater than it first appeared.

I don’t know what Wagg will make of it all, but on the face of it, replacing Cosgrove, Dalrymple and Maynard with a South African batsman of decent, rather than spectacular talent seems an imbalanced trade-off. The grass looks not at all green on the other side of the fence for Wagg and at this rate the Welsh county will need a liberal scattering of Miracle-Gro…

Of course, its all our fault. If we’d not earned a battling draw against the Welsh county in the season’s last fixture they would have been in Division One by now, something that they (and presumably Graham Wagg) expected. As things stand, they have a lot of work to do before April to restore harmony.

According to the Wales Online website tonight, there are now concerns over the futures of both Jim Allenby and Wagg and they are the first to mention Tom Maynard as being unhappy.

Of course, faults are rarely one-sided and there have been rumblings for some time of a drinking culture at the county. Perhaps this is a savage attempt to deal with the problem and at this distance it is unfair to be too critical.

But what a mess it is. When Alviro Petersen admits that he signed for the county WITHOUT speaking to the Head of Cricket, and that he was signed by the Welsh county’s equivalent of Don Amott and Keith Loring, there is something very wrong. For all the grumblings of a small minority about Derbyshire’s committee, we at least go about things the right way, with cricket matters left to the man who is paid to do the job. If they are not happy with his performance, get rid of him and then let the sucessor do the recruitment. As my granny used to say “I didn’t buy a dog to bark myself,” a comment that always confused me as she never bought a dog…

The story smacks of Macchiavellian subterfuge that does no one any favours. I suspect it has the legs to run for some time yet