Recruitment and tactics

Recruitment and tactics. 

This has been a recurring theme in my blog posts for a good part of the summer and the winter that preceded it. Certainly since the start of the T20 I seem to have been beating the same drum and I really can't make a lot of sense of it. 

Let's take recruitment first of all. When the Derbyshire board sit down at the end of the season to debrief, there should be one question staring them in the face. Why did we have three overseas players on the staff for the T20 and only play one of them? 

Only in five of the twelve matches we have played so far have we gone in with two overseas players, winning two and losing three. In recent matches we have named three in the squad, yet only played one. It may be that Cam Fletcher is injured, still recovering from a groin injury, but why name him, if that is the case? You may as well name Ben Aitchison in the squad. If Fletcher is fit, he should be playing, even if he is oddly one of three wicket keepers in a first choice T20 side, making him another one-dimensional player when we needed more.

As for Daryn Dupavillon, he always seemed destined to disappear if Mohammad Amir arrived. Why? Because as I pointed out at the time of his signing, I couldn't see how he would get in the team, when Zak Chappell and Pat Brown are skilled, experienced T20 bowlers and Amir a world-class operator. Including him too would leave a tail of worrying length.

The challenge always seemed likely to be the fifth bowler and so it has often transpired. How handy would it have been to have someone who could score a quick twenty and bowl four good overs of whatever pace, rather than a one-dimensional cricketer, such as DD or Blair Tickner? Surely an up and coming Australian might have been worth a shot? Other counties seem to have found overseas players appropriate to their needs, so why couldn't we? 

Then there are tactics. If you look back through our teams from the first game of the competition onwards, there appears to have been no grasp of the best lineup. 

In turn, a consequence is muddled tactics, with players seemingly unaware of how they fit into the 'master plan'.

Let's take Luis Reece as an example. I have said before that I am a big fan of his, but his game is different to the likes of Donald, Whiteley and Patel. I don't know why we broke up the Donald/Lloyd partnership, but if Luis is going to open, he has to knock it around, give the more aggressive partners the strike and ensure that he bats through the innings. I know that we are talking elite level here, but Kohli, Tendulkar, Kallis, Williamson, and 'Buck' Rogers did this, so too Dean Elgar and Usman Khawaja. When they opened, they set out their stall to be there at the end of the twenty overs, or near to it. Rotating the strike, keeping an established batter in and allowing the more expansive players around them to boost the scoring rate. 

In contrast, when Luis was out in the third over yesterday, he had 15 runs from the same number of deliveries, while Nye Donald had faced one ball. When the desired rate was ten an over, Donald needed to be given as much strike as possible during the Powerplay. It was painful to watch Luis swinging at several balls without success, using up crucial deliveries and upping the required rate. 

I'm not blaming him for the defeat, but the tactics were awry. Surely it made sense to take advantage of the closer set fields and have Lloyd blast away with Donald, or at least have Reece knock the ones and let Donald at the bowlers? 

If we don't make the knockout stages, thoughts will understandably return to when we have made selection blunders, poor on-field decisions and naive recruitment. I don't expect Derbyshire to win every game, but I don't think it is unrealistic or asking too much to expect us to know our best eleven, or for those players to have a clear vision of what their role is within the side. I haven't seen much evidence of that, in a batting order that has changed with the frequency of a traffic light.

Brooke Guest would have made better sense as an opener. Power hitting isn't his game, but he is the quickest runner between wickets in the side and strike rotation comes easy to him. I wouldn't necessarily put money on Brooke to regularly score fourteen an over at the death, but he would have been a good anchor, around who the rest could play the more expansive game. 

Mousley did that for Birmingham yesterday. Sixty from 44 balls, while Ali (59 from 32) and Hain (52 from 30) blazed away at the other end. Savvy cricket, the kind I like to see. Malan did the same for Yorkshire, chasing over 200. They wouldn't have won without Thompson's 40 from 14 balls, but they wouldn't have got close without Malan batting through at one end. 

One day, I hope to see a Derbyshire side show consistent common sense like that.

But we haven't seen it often this year. If we still still manage to progress, it will have been despite the tactics, rather than because of them.