There was good news for Derbyshire County Cricket Club this week with the announcement of a new sponsor.
Pattonair, a multinational company with their headquarters in Derby will get naming rights for the County Ground and their support will back the clubs on-field ambitions. It can only be good news and I applaud the work of chief executive Ryan Duckett and his team in pulling this together.
Meanwhile, there was an interesting interview on the club's website in which wayne madsen said that Dave Houghton was the best coach that he had worked with and praised the work that the squad had done so far. Wayne will be flying out to play in the PSL shortly and I am sure that he will do well.
There is a feel good factor around the club at the moment, which is diametrically opposed to that around English cricket. With plans advancing in regard to a new tournament of whatever length is eventually decided, I have a feeling that 2019 will be the last summer in which the traditional county cricket fan will feel they are on a level of some kind with the other first class counties.
I am far from a betting man, but nothing that I have seen or heard has changed my mind from the opinion that this competition is a clandestine way of making eight 'super counties', with the rest simply becoming feeders for them in time.
While the argument of 1.3 million pounds per year over 5 years is strong, I do not feel alone in asserting that we have accepted 'conscience money' to wipe out debts but to the detriment of the overall standard and interests of the game as a whole.
It is all very sad.
Finally, in the Caribbean, we see a totally underprepared England team being hammered by a West Indies side that has some promising players but is far from the juggernaut that dominated world cricket from the 1970s onwards.
Joe Root asserts that the side was prepared for the tour, when it is perfectly obvious that they were not. With batsman struggling for touch and bowlers for rhythm, they will lose a series that should, with preparation, have been winnable.
The lack of preparation smacks of arrogance and it is always nice to see such an attitude put firmly its place. While the romantics among us will delight in seeing an improved West Indian team, I am not convinced that they are as good as our poorly prepared team is making them look with poor shot selection and bowling of mediocre standard, in some cases.
Good luck to them though. Perhaps the embarrassing spectacle of our insipid performance will be the catalyst for future tours to allow for proper preparation.
Just as you would not expect Derbyshire's players to start a County season on the back of two days against a university side and a couple of nets, is it not common sense for the highest level of the game to be properly prepared for?
I rest my case.
why should this series have been "winnable " the west indies have played some unbelievable cricket this series thus far with bat and ball and therefore deserve the credit and the plaudits for their performance as opposed to saying they did good due to lack of preparation from England.Furthermore Englands batting has been poor mainly due to the mindset of the england players and of this new positive mentality which they have adopted in the shorter formats.This is shown by them always wanting to put bat on ball as opposed to leaving the ball.Bairstow said that he felt there was always a ball with his name on it so he wanted to score as many as possible before he was out .Bravo however said that he wanted to bat as long as possible and if he did he knew the windies would do good.(The differene in these two opinions from players just says it all really).This approach was taken by the rest of the batsman too hence the windies have been sucesful.I do find it quite irritating how a rejuvenated west indies team has not been given the credit for their performances with bat ,ball and fielding by you in this post .
ReplyDeleteBy the way i am a pakistan cricket fan and a derbyshire fan and i am in no way affiliated with West indies cricket.
Ismaeel Akram
I think the West Indies did well, I think Holder is fine all rounder and they have a number of promising players.
ReplyDeleteHaving their best four bowlers fit for the series and bowling to suit the wickets helped immeasurably and the challenge will be in replicating it when they aren't, or when a team that is better prepared than this England one comes up against them.
There are still question marks on the batting, but I am pleased to see some sort of renaissance for the game there and I hope that the crowds come back to four day cricket to support that .
To conclude, fair play to the West Indies. You can only ever beat what is in front of you and they outplayed England in every department. But you cannot deny that our bullish attempt at playing T20 shots over what should have been five days was a major contributor to the demise