Who knows how this is going to play out. Doubt they’ve done much, if any, red ball practice since their last match.

The interesting choice will be with Sibley available, do they go to 7 batsmen, or stick with Burgess at 6 and take the extra bowler.

Can also assume Stokes will be available which makes things slightly more complicated. But a good win in this, and other results going their way could see the club practically qualified to the top group with a game to spare.

I would imagine that a few of those who played in the four day second team game in Leeds will come into contention for selection, such as Yates, Sibley, Malan and Norwell.

Game 9! Change the title, it will mess with my ocd otherwise!

Big game this. 4day games during the Blast group stage can throw up some wild passages of play and outcomes.

We owe Durham one. Agree that If we can win, or even just draw well, we have a real good chance of finishing in the top 2.

Yes Stokes available you'd think. Sibley available, Yates back.

Sibley
Rhodes
Yates
Malan
Hain
Burgess
Bresnan
Briggs
Miles
Norwell
OHD

Case for Malan missing out?! Lamb could well come in for Malan or a bowler (Brez?).

From the 13 man squad, Tim B and OHD (!) are not selected to start.

Lineup:-
Rhodes, Sibley, Yates, Malan, Hain, Lamb, Burgess, Briggs, Miles, Norwell & Sidebottom

Interesting that OHD has been dropped in favour of Sidebottom, he's been a regular CC starter this season. I guess either Ryan's performances in the Seconds recently (and Olly's !) have persuaded mangement of that - or he is carrying a bit of a knock ? The Captain has obviously also realised he IS good enough to fulfill the fourth seamers role and 'Old Man Bresnan' is not needed !

Durham won the toss and chose to bowl. Obviously, the start is delayed, because of rain. Looking at today's forecast, I can't see any play today. But it looks fine for tomorrow, so we should get a full day then. After that ...... well, not good. We just have to hope that it's the same for all the other teams battling out for the top 2 places in the group.

They said on the Twitter feed both OHD and Bresnan miss out due to injury. OHD has a foot injury and it’s a calf issue for Bresnan.
With the forecast for days 1,3 & 4, I think it’s very ambitious to think anything other than a draw will be the outcome here.
So a big push for bonus points will be key. Get as far ahead of Essex as possible. Hope Derbyshire put up a fight against Notts, and that it gets curtailed by the weather too.

Inspection at half 4

BristolBear wrote:

They said on the **Twitter feed both OHD and Bresnan miss out due to injury. OHD has a foot injury and it’s a calf issue for Bresnan. **
With the forecast for days 1,3 & 4, I think it’s very ambitious to think anything other than a draw will be the outcome here.
So a big push for bonus points will be key. Get as far ahead of Essex as possible. Hope Derbyshire put up a fight against Notts, and that it gets curtailed by the weather too.

Strange then that they were both in a 13 man squad, which was announced only 24 hours before that Twitter message.

It's not unusual for a player to be included in a squad when he is recovering from an injury and a decison is made on the day of the game if he is fit enough to play, or for a player to be injured after a squad is selected.

Bresnan was definitely a day of game decision. He was stretching off his calf against Notts on Wednesday. But he finished his overs and stayed out on the field.

So it clearly wasn’t a major injury, but a case of seeing if it had recovered enough to let him play 4 days.

Also, I think some gamesmanship goes into choosing squads in situations like this. Pick the strongest squad, make the opposition bring all their players, maybe make them risk players who might be carrying a knock, thinking they’ll be facing a full strength team.

In terms of this match, it was definitely a toss to win and bowl first to get as many bonus points as possible. Not sure anyone is scoring much around the country because of the conditions, and play is definitely going to be limited throughout the 4 days.

Sibley out for a duck - again! Given his form for us recently (and for the 2nds in red ball) and England, he has a lot to do in the remaining 3 CC innings before India Test selection?!

Malan out for 31, very frustrating as he was looking good and quite fluent. 108-2 and looking increasingly bogged down although Yates has just got his 50.

Poor from Hain. He knew the trap, he knew what was coming, but couldn’t resist.
Think the low scoring rate got to him, but you’d expect him to be smarter than that.

Them shots from Rhodes and particularly Lamb were so bad it was scarcely believable.

Annoying from the middle order.
Anyone can get a duck, anyone can get out early. But Malan, Hain and Rhodes need to go on from 30’s. 30’s are no good. Also, as fantastic as it is to score a century, Yates now needs to learn to kick on, not get out immediately afterwards.

Grafted against a good attack for 4/5 hours then lose 6 for 16. I'm more annoyed about this than i was Friday!

Looks as though the batsmen are bringing their T20 form into the CC. Not good enough and we must hope the bowlers can do something special. How much time is lost to the weather is not certain but not getting at least 3 batting points is poor. I do hope after a good campaign so far, that this game isn't the one where we threw it all away.

While most of the batsmen (Yates excepted) struggled today, I see that our T20 old boy Colin de Grandhomme scored 174 not out for Hampshire against Surrey. That's 53 more than Malan has scored in eight Championship innings so far. I'm not saying that he would have been a better bet because he has only just finished playing for New Zealand. Just emphasising how much Malan has under-performed so far.
Anyway, I can't comment in too much detail because I was disloyal and chose to go to the Cheltenham Festival today rather than Edgbaston.

Malan looked in good touch, it was so disappointing for him to fall when he did and how he did.

I’m struggling with Hain at the moment, I know he has been pretty consistent and that is not something we can say about most of our batsmen. But, 30 in 100 balls just heaped the pressure on. I really think he needs to develop an out ball where he can keep the score ticking along even without the big shots. He has the talent and the experience we just need him to deliver that little bit more.

This is the problem with scoring so slowly, the opposition are in the game for a lot longer. Even scoring at just 3 an over would have got us to nearly 300 today. I don’t mind scoring slowly if it means we bat the other side out of the game (a bit like we did when we won the second division a couple of years ago) but at the moment we’re not batting for long enough to make it a good tactic. Of course, there is the chance that if we tried to score faster we’d get out faster as well, but I still think we need to try and keep the score ticking over better.

What will be the effect of the news from the England camp that, because of COVID, they are picking a whole new squad for the ODI series against Pakistan? Those chosen are being pulled out of the current round of matches. Ben Stokes is going to captain the England team so presumably he won't be seen again in this match. Sam Hain for England? All will be revealed at 11.00 am, apparently.
We live in interesting times!