Forget Leeds and the Ashes, for the parochial cricket fan like me, today's big game is taking place further south, at the Fischer County Ground in Leicester.
If Derbyshire win today, they will have one foot in the knockout stages of the Vitality Blast, regardless of how they do at Old Trafford on Monday. Durham, Yorkshire and Birmingham could still technically overtake them, so let's look at their remaining fixtures:
Durham - Birmingham (H) Nottinghamshire (A)
Yorkshire - Nottinghamshire (A) Northamptonshire (H) Birmingham (A)
Birmingham - Northamptonshire (H) Durham (A) Yorkshire (H)
With scheduled games against each other, something has to give and it would be ironic were our dear neighbours to do us a favour in a couple of those matches. But if we win both of ours, it won't matter - and that must be the aim.
Lancashire tomorrow will be tough, and since I am working I must follow from a distance. Today's is huge though, and we must hope that the right Derbyshire, the one that bristles with energy and aggression, not to mention a shed load of skill, turns up today.
I don't see any change from Friday night's demolition of Northamptonshire, a side that has some of the biggest lads I have seen on a professional cricket ground in many a year. Size isn't necessarily to the detriment of ability, but it is easy to point at and find fault with when things go wrong.
The only question mark will be Boyd Rankin's place. Is he better with that than Darren Stevens, or would the side be better served with the selection of Mark Watt (who I suspect will play at Old Trafford) or Anuj Dal? Each brings respective strengths to the table, and of course the wicket will dictate what happens in that respect. I expect no other changes for Derbyshire, because there isn't really anyone else, now Tom Lace's season is over.
As for our hosts, they embarrassed us at Derby and we are better than that. In Colin Ackermann they have one of the players of the tournament, but while his figures with the ball suggest he is Jim Laker reincarnated, he simply does the basics well and lets the batsmen make mistakes. He and Mark Cosgrove are the danger men with the bat, but they have got a good side together in this format and cannot be underestimated.
Regardless of the result, both sides have done well in the competition and have flown under the radar against sides with big name and big money imports. It is that side of cricket that I enjoy, and why county cricket continues to mean way more to me than the international game.
With capacity crowds around the country, the Vitality Blast has proved a huge draw and amply illustrated why The Hundred is unnecessary. Properly marketed with a fraction of the money that the new competition is costing, the competition could have captured wider public imagination, just as it has proved a huge hit with the converted.
Like all of you, I would love to see my county at Finals Day.
Fingers crossed that we can do it, one step at a time.
This will be a huge test? Can we repeat the kind of accomplished performance that we did against Northants? We bowled tight and batted sensibly, not accumulating too many dot balls, keeping the scoreboard ticking over, and pacing the chase perfectly. The players demonstrated self belief, something that seems to have been lacking in some games.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the question mark over Rankin. He hasn't done much, so far. With his experience with bat and ball, Stevens could turn out to be a match winner. Yet I would go with Dal. He's an emerging player - and we should be giving him more experience - and one ideally suited to the T20.
I went to Old Trafford a couple Saturdays ago (v Notts) and I'm struggling to see how the 'hundred' will attract a very different audience to T20 - or what T20 could achieve consistently. And yes there were web cams a plenty to keep people amused. My son made a good point to me yesterday that it's partly about building up the anticipation and he said that Channel 9 (which I think is free to view) are particulary good at this with the Big Bash. The crux of the matter for me is that even if the BBC were only able to screen say 20% of the Sky output for T20 that would attract such a bigger cricket audience because the product this season has been very good. The Leics game for the neutral was a really good one - whilst not perhaps for the Derbyshire consumer.
ReplyDeleteThe squad announced includes Qadri, which suggests that they expect him to play, probably instead of Rankin. Leicester is generally a quick scoring ground, however, and the slower bowlers seem to play less of a part than in their away matches, so it might just be an insurance policy against them using an old, slow wicket for this game. Leics have a poor record at home, having won only one of the four matches completed there this year, and only one in seven last year when we beat them comprehensively, so this is one where you'd expect our away advantage to count. If Leics have shown one thing this year, though, it is that you never get what you expect.
ReplyDeleteRather against my better judgment, I will be going. Part of my reservation is what a horrible place to watch cricket Grace Road is as a result of the boorish and moronic behaviour of a handful of their supporters, and the other is what a dull and unsatisfactory form of cricket T20 is most of the time. Both of the last two home matches, for different reasons, had all of the drama, spectacle and atmosphere of a bowl of dirty washing-up water
for the last 15 overs. For all of the professionalism of Derbyshire's performance on Friday, watching Godleman and Madsen tick over singles for the best part of 10 overs was as unengaging as watching them minimise the damage to their run-rate the previous week. There's no denying the success or popularity of T20, and Derbyshire seem to have done a fine job this year in marketing it, but even at it's best, it's a tasty titbit, and most of the time it's a dull, plodding inevitability after the firt few overs of the second innings.
One of the things I was musing on as Derbyshire jogged towards the finishing line on Friday was that for all that we only have one under=performing overseas player this year, we have already done as well as we did last year with a much more stellar team on paper with Ferguson, Riaz, Viljoen and Wilson, and better than we have in most years part from 2017. Looking around the country, there are only a handful of overseas players making significant contributions (unfortunately for us, a couple of those are at Lancs), with only 5 of the top 20 batsmen and none of the top 20 bowlers being overseas. This adds to my oft-repeated refrain that in most cases overseas players are a waste of money in cricketing terms, and are mostly barely known names with no box-office appeal. How much have Dwaine Pretorius and Faheen Ashraf contributed at Northants, or Shaun March and Fakhar Zaman at Glamorgan? Isn't it surely better for counties of our size and budget to spend what we have on attracting and retaining good quality English players?
I would be surprised if Qadri plays, with no real track re Ord in T20, but you are right about the insurance policy.
DeleteAnd also re overseas. Somerset have done OK with Azam, but a lot have done very little. Getting the right man, with a point to prove, is key. I do think van Beek improved of late, but the last few games are big for him to show what he can do