After day two of this game, it appears that Derbyshire are sliding to the latest defeat of a horrid season.
The top six all got starts, but none went on to the sort of score that was badly needed for us to retain parity in this game. Granted we are up against an attack that I regard as the best in the division, but we require a major effort to avoid the follow on tomorrow and I just don't get the impression that the side is up for it at present.
Marcus North apparently got a poor decision, but for the rest it was a battle that they survived for so long but were then dismissed. There were encouraging signs, against a team that includes two international bowlers and two England Lions, but the unavoidable truth is that this team of ours needs time to come together and glean the personnel and experience to compete at this level.
The Hampshire side is packed with players of great individual talent that are playing as a team, I have no doubt that we have players of talent, but they aren't playing as a unit, which is what happened when we won this title in 2012.
We played above ourselves that year, having got off to a flyer with some good fortune with the weather and inspirational performances from Martin Guptill. The latter was more important than a lot realised, his confident approach on a cricket field rubbing off on young and impressionable team mates.
This year, whether on or off the pitch, Lady Luck has deserted us. I'm not buying into the 'bring Krikk back' comments, as that's gone now. Graeme Welch is in charge, as everyone hoped he would be when Karl Krikken declined to apply for his own role and we must now be patient and allow Welch the time and breathing space to shape this team.
His start has been the stuff of nightmares, but we have to show the patience referred to by Chris Grant last week and by Rob Enderby in an excellent piece below my last article. There is no alternative. The club doesn't have the money to make wholesale changes and perhaps a few players reached a career peak in that 2012 summer that seems a long way off right now.
Subsequent performances certainly suggest that and we need a major effort in the coming weeks to recover some of the respect that we have built up over the past two summers.
And with that, for now, I bid you a good night.
Postscript - great to see Tom Poynton taking a lead in the Cricket Derbyshire India Club. If we can tap into a large and growing community and see some of them at the ground on a regular basis, it will be of huge future benefit to our club.
I wish him all the luck in the world and hope the initiative results in a bumper crowd for the visit of some legendary cricketers - and more county members in the long term.
We can,t blame all this on luck,or the lack of.Our problems run far deeper than luck could ever hope to eliminate.
ReplyDeleteThere are two things that worry me more than anything. We have not given ourselves the best chance of succeeding in many games because the team management has made too many wrong decisions. These include choices at the toss,team selection and on field tactics. There are numerous examples of where these three factors alone have had a significant bearing on the outcome of matches.No one gets everything right but we are a long way down the road towards proving you can get most things wrong.
I,m not blaming everything on the management by any means because there comes a point where fingers have to be pointed at individual players,simply because they are not performing.
Secondly,we are now almost at the point where we are basing our hopes for the future on a number of untried and untested young players. I,m not going to imply none of these will make the grade,but history so far suggests that most of them won,t. Having to thrust them in a team where the more senior players have failed is not a solution that will bear fruit. All it will do is destroy them.
A small example in the current match is having Hughes and Elstone batting next to each other. Split them up and give them the chance of batting with a more senior player. Why not try Elstone at 3 and have Hughes come in at 5. That way you have Moore,Madsen and North between them,people who may offer some guidence and encouragement. Both of them got hopelessly bogged down today (not that they were on their own) and only had each other for company. This might appear to be a small thing in itself,but it smacks of management not thinking as clearly as it should be doing.
This game will probably conclude tomorrow and looking at the forecast i,m sure Hampshire will be planning on it doing so. Even if by some miracle we avoid the follow on,it will only delay the inevitable unless the rain comes to our rescue.
Your idea for batting youngsters alternately in the order is OK in principle, Marc, but in practice it seldom works out like that.
ReplyDeleteIt supposes that the senior players wont get out, which of course you can't do. Thus, should Moore go early, you'd have Bozza and Elstone together, and so on down the order.
It also means that the skipper, who has had his greatest success opening or number three, drops to four and your overseas player, a batsman of international quality, to six. Too low for me.
If the top four score well, five and six will find it a lot easier anyway.
I also disagree that we're almost wholly dependent on youth. You're not going to tell me that Madsen, Moore, North, Footitt, Groeners and Palladino are bad players? Not all in prime form, but the talent is there.
We need something special - individually or as a team - to spark the season. Who will step up to the plate and produce it?