The penultimate home game of the summer sees Gloucestershire make the trip to Derby, in a game that has little riding on it, except for a home desire for a first championship win.
It is good to see Will Davis, Ben Cotton and Harvey Hosein restored to fitness and taking their place in this squad:
Billy Godleman
Ben Slater
Alex Hughes
Wayne Madsen
Neil Broom
Charlie Macdonell
Harvey Hosein
Matt Critchley
Callum Parkinson
Tom Milnes
Tony Palladino
Ben Cotton
Will Davis
My guess is that one spinner and one seamer will drop out on the morning, Callum Parkinson likely to get the spinner's berth in this format. Charlie Macdonell will hope to reinforce the positive impression of his debut, with another effort that might just earn him a contract for another summer.
Michael Klinger has returned to Australia, so England under-19 George Hankin replaces him in this squad:
Roderick (c), Dent, Tavare, Marshall, Hankins, Mustard, J.Taylor, Miles, Payne, Norwell, M.Taylor, Shaw.
I'd love to predict a Derbyshire win, but the season-long issue remains - who is going to take the twenty wickets required? A draw appears a more likely result.
But I hope I am proved wrong...
Perhaps we'd better not get too excited about the absence of Klinger - he wasn't there when they got the better of us at Bristol. It's chastening to note that our team tomorrow will have no more than 4 (possibly only 3 if Cotton doesn't play) of the side that played at Bristol back in April, and 6 of the team in April will not or may not play for us again. I'm sure that some will describe that as progress, but to me it represents what an absolute catastrophe this season has been.
ReplyDeleteThe past two weeks have possibly been the most depressing of my 50 plus years supporting Derbyshire. T20 and one day quarter finals, semi-finals and finals without a Derbyshire presence, a round of championship matches in which every match counted for something but had no relevance to our position, apart from the possibility that Northants or Glamorgan might win and put themselves even further out of our reach in the race for bottom place. Nothing to look forward to but the vague possibility that we might win 2 of our last 3 matches to avoid being bottom of the 2nd division, and the same promises that we heard last year about exciting prospects for new signings. And the knowledge that we were likely to lose Chesney Hughes because we're not prepared to pay him the same amount as the increasingly hapless Neil Broom.
Of course, there were years as bad in the 70's and early noughties, but we knew that our bargain basement teams of those eras were too weak to cope. What's most galling about our current situation is that there is a core of a very good side, which Graeme Welch allowed to be stripped of its bowling experience without being able to replace it, either through permanent or loan signings. The chairman may say there isn't a player in the game that we could not sign, and Welch himself said that he had several irons in the fire last winter, but the fact is that the bowling wasn't strengthened during the winter, or even during the season with loan signings as it became clear how incapable we were of bowling sides out. With the savings on Mark Footitt's salary (and the "transfer fee" paid by Surrey for him) and even more when Andy Carter's contract was cancelled, finance surely can't have been the issue, and it's hard to believe that there wasn't a single bowler in the country available for loan who couldn't have improved the worst bowling side in the country.
Perhaps tomorrow will give us a performance to put a smile on our faces for once this season if the recent form of Davis and Milnes is repeated, but it will count for very little in the context of this disasterous year.
An impassioned and well written piece notoveryet. The only comment I would make is that there is no 'knowledge' that Hughes is in dispute over money, nor that he wants parity with Neil Broom.
ReplyDeleteOutside the club no one knows the respective salaries of players. I suggested it COULD be one of the several reasons he isnt playing, but we'll not set a hare across the park by saying it is 'knowledge'
I share your pain though...
An impassioned and well written piece notoveryet. The only comment I would make is that there is no 'knowledge' that Hughes is in dispute over money, nor that he wants parity with Neil Broom.
ReplyDeleteOutside the club no one knows the respective salaries of players. I suggested it COULD be one of the several reasons he isnt playing, but we'll not set a hare across the park by saying it is 'knowledge'
I share your pain though...
Derbyshire have had some shambolic seasons in the last twenty years this years is a vintage
ReplyDeleteFair point, Peakfan. Substitute awareness of likelihood of leaving for knowledge.
ReplyDelete