Derbyshire 398-5 and 232-5 dec (Reece 96, Hughes 48)
Leeds/Bradford MCCU 200 and 94 (Rampaul 3-7, Taylor 3-26. Conners 2-13)
Derbyshire won by 336 runs
While Dave Houghton's Derbyshire (not to be confused with Frank Lampard's Derby County) will face sterner opposition during the course of the season, this warm up match has been of great benefit.
All of the top seven batsmen spent time in the middle, some going on to a big score and one to a career best. As for the bowlers, they all did a terrific job. Ravi Rampaul looked every inch an international bowler and zipped out the top order in each innings. There was barely a bad delivery from.the Trinidadian and he looks in fine fettle.
Sam Conners looked quite slippery today and a couple of batsmen didn't seem too keen on his pace and bounce. He was on a hat-trick at one point and has done his chances of inclusion in the first championship match of the season no harm at all.
James Taylor impressed me too,by the speed at which he had sorted his no ball issues, and he took another three wickets. He doesn't appear as quick as Conners, but in this match got greater reward. He looked like he could handle a bat too, and I was left enthused by my first sight of both at this level.
Meanwhile, Anuj Dal had a chance for a short innings before the declaration. He again impressed as a busy batsman, with good footwork. In the afternoon there was an opportunity to bowl and he looked more than useful, bowling with decent pace and aggression.
In the morning, Luis Reece just missed out on a century and Alex Hughes a half century, but both had valuable time in the middle and balls in the middle of the bat.
Dave Houghton now has a nice decision to make. One assumes that both Tony Palladino and Logan van Beek will come into the side for the game against Durham, leaving a place for one of the youngsters.
Based on this evidence, none of them will be out of place and will offer something different to the attack.
There will be no getting carried away at the result, but one can only beat what is in front of you.On that basis, Derbyshire did a very fine job here, but the serious stuff starts next week.
We would appear to be in rude shape and raring to go.
Would suggest that warn up went almost perfectly. Good to hear that Rampaul is performing better. Let’s see how it goes next week. Fingers crossed for a good season.
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