Durham 160-5 (Short 68, Steel 47, Critchley 2-22)
Derbyshire 153-7 (Godleman 39, Hudson-Prentice 31* Trevaskis 3-16)
Durham won by 7 runs
For me, that was the most disappointing result of the T20 campaign so far for Derbyshire.
They had done well at the half way point, but I had a feeling that the visiting side's decline from a position of 114-0 in 13 overs was as much down to a slowing pitch as it was to good bowling. No one was really collared, but the visiting side's subsequent use of three spinners with success suggests that the omission of Mark Watt may have been a mistake tonight. Darren Stevens' experience may have been useful too, but life is always easy in hindsight.
When we reached 42 in the fifth over, Godleman going like a train, the chase looked on target. Despite the quick loss of both openers, du Plooy and Madsen rebuilt and appeared to be making the run chase a formality, 87 on the board at the halfway stage. Billy's dismissal is not one that he will look back on with fondness, but my assumption is that he was trying to maximise the runs from the seamers, before the introduction of spin.
The advent of the excellent Trevaskis to the attack removed both of our main men in one over and although Derbyshire's cause wasn't helped by rain delays, the decline had set in at that stage and the middle order contributed disappointingly little.
Once again Hudson-Prentice hit well, but 29 were needed from two overs after the final rain delay and in the end we were narrowly beaten.
The visitors did well but will reflect on the winning of the toss being very important tonight.
But we face an uphill task to qualify from here and need to pull of a surprise result or two in order to do so.
Extremely disappointed. Middle overs of the game we'd put ourselves in the driving seat and then threw it away.
ReplyDeleteWorrying that we can’t read our own pitches. They clearly had success with spin after crotchley did. But we didn’t give LDP or Wayne a go and not picking watt was a shocker if he is fully fit. Disappointing chase. It looked won once or twice yet we threw it away. Nobody going on to see it home. Very disappointing result.
ReplyDeleteQuite right that this was the most disappointing result so far, and while it doesn't entirely kill our hopes of qualifying, there is too much poor cricket being played too often to think we'll string together the results we need. I don't honestly think either the toss or the pitch had much to do with this as we had the game pretty much won at 87-2 with 74 needed from 60 balls, basically a run a ball with a boundary every couple of overs.
ReplyDeleteUnnecessary shots by du Plooy and Madsen changed the momentum and the wickets changed the DLS equation, which meant that we were always slightly behind the rate thereafter, which might have affected some of the later strokes played with rain never far away. All credit to Hudson-Prentice for getting us so close at the end, and belatedly to Logan van Beek, who showed for once that there might be a decent batsman lurking in there.
We'd already not helped ourselves with the odd decision to leave out Watt on a pitch that clearly suited the spinners, then not to try either Madsen or du Plooy rather than Reece or Hughes, both of whom have been pretty ineffectual with their bowling this year, and most of all by Smit dropping Short, which cost us 50 runs before the partnership was broken. His keeping has been pretty ordinary this year, and a missed stumping against Worcestershire was equally costly. Hubris perhaps, for the rather inappropriate interview he did this week implicitly talking down Hosein and suggesting a loss of faith in him from the management.
It's easy to see from his noise and energy what Smit might bring to the team, and his encouragement and advice to bowlers is well above the general banal level of "let's go bang bang, boys" or "two more here lads" but he needs to bring more to the party than his cheerleading. The reducing quality of his wicket-keeping apart, his ability to eat up dot balls that I've talked about before here was always going to help us lose a match. It's one thing scoring briskly for short periods in lost causes, as he did against Warwickshire and Notts, and another to score quickly when the runs matter as they did here. 3 from 8 is poor stuff, with 6 dot balls, and in particular 3 dot balls at the end of the 17th over with rain already falling. We've seen this all too often from him in critical situations (Worcestershire in the t20 last year stands out when he kept a flourishing Dal off strike by taking a single off the last ball of the over and then playing three dot balls in the penultimate over sticks in my mind) and if he has to play, he needs to bat higher in the order where his slow starts will have less impact.
For me, though, the argument for Hosein becomes stronger by the match. He rotates the strike well, is fast between the wickets, and has a wide enough range of shots to work the ball around even if he isn't likely to hit many boundaries. It struck me the other night watching Lewis Hill play a match-winning innings for Leics that we know no more about Hosein in t20 than we did when he made his debut at about the same time as Hill. We can now see how Hill, probably the less talented batsman, has developed with the opportunity, and with qualification now unlikely, have nothing to lose with Hosein and everything to gain, if only to clarify whether he is the t20 future for us that Smit, because of age if nothing else, assuredly is not.
I'm less taken with Hosein the batsman than you, notoveryet. In a four day game, when he can bat at his own pace he is fine, but I have not seen him yet do well under pressure.
DeleteIndeed, he tends to nudge ones and run well, then revert to 'Dilscoops' with less success. Lack of power or poor timing?
I watched him obviously panic at Durham when the game was nearly won, struggle to get the ball away then perish to an awful shot when he should have tried to save it.
Like Hughes and Critchley, he plays enough innings of potential to think he has cracked it, then seems to take a step back. Big year for him next year, as he, has either to cement the role in all formats or we accept there's a need to look elsewhere. Plenty of good keeper batsmen in second team cricket around the circuit.
We threw this one away , such a disappointment , 73 needed off 9 overs with 8 wickets to spare and we couldn't finish it ?
ReplyDeleteWe did well to drag Durham back from 93-0 but to see so many of our batsmen throwing their wickets away was a shame