I just felt it coming from the 15th over of the Somerset (so nice they're actually called their proper county name) reply.

I'm now convinced of 'the curse of Edgbaston': that we'll not appear in a finals until they're moved to another venue.

The game was won. Bowl a decent length and they wouldn’t have got near it, every time we dropped short we got carted over the boundary. Even Gleeson in his brilliant spell dropped short on one occasion and got the same treatment, the Garton over was awful, just awful, as bad as the decision to throw him the ball. Simon Doull commented that all we needed to do was bowl fast and full! Lots of chatter on here re: Davies, the defence always leap to his batting. Quite rightly, given his highlights and given his ridiculous dismissals, together with his lack the discipline, there is obviously room for debate and disagreement. That said his captaincy and leadership is woeful and will never change.

Amazing to think how fast we were scoring whereby 220 was definitely on and yet no 6's. Did the side as a whole look at the way we have lost games recently by failing to clear the ropes whilst trying to hit 6's. I do not believe in any curses, different opposition and different ways of losing have been our downfall. In 2023, we just never got going with the bat v Essex and were 20 short, last year we should have won with time to spare but kept giving catches whilst failing to score 6's and yesterday, we might have bowled too short too often but we never made that much of the good start. Garton at 7 is too high and often when you see T20 games lost, it is that middle-order problem of not moving the score on quickly enough, Hain, Barnard and Garton combined made 38 off 36 balls. I don't even believe it is a psychological thing, just that we find ways to lose by somehow 'Clamming Up' and not playing our natural game.

The only T20 innings ever at Taunton not to include a six.

As for the curse of Edgbaston, if it exists then maybe we need to find a way of lifting it.
We need to contact one or more male witches ("warlocks", I hear you say - but they do exist) and get them to perform an exorcism on the square at Edgbaston. The half hour before midnight is the ideal time for "good" magic; and all the best warlocks and witches prefer to perform their rituals "skyclad" or naked.
I'm not sure if tickets could be sold and/or whether Sky would be interested in the broadcast rights but it's worth a try.

Rayb wrote:

The game was won. Bowl a decent length and they wouldn’t have got near it, every time we dropped short we got carted over the boundary. Even Gleeson in his brilliant spell dropped short on one occasion and got the same treatment, the Garton over was awful, just awful, as bad as the decision to throw him the ball. Simon Doull commented that all we needed to do was bowl fast and full! Lots of chatter on here re: Davies, the defence always leap to his batting. Quite rightly, given his highlights and given his ridiculous dismissals, together with his lack the discipline, there is obviously room for debate and disagreement. That said his captaincy and leadership is woeful and will never change.

As BR points out, yesterday was the best example of a man with such poor Captaincy skills, he should never be near the job again. Can't fault his batting, certainly in recent weeks and his keeping is OK, but that third responsibility should go elsewhere in 2026.

The way he rotated his bowlers at Taunton, was a complete disaster and the obvious panic of a single 13 run over by Lintott, throwing any tactical plan (if he had one?!) out of the window, shows he hasn't got the nous to be Captain - in red or white ball.

As to who should take over, I would have said Barnard, but he hasn't impressed in the Metro Cup, so I guess, it might have to be a new guy. Perhaps that overseas spinner, which is the most obvious recruitment priority this autumn?

Gerry, you appear to know too much about witchcraft and Warlocks and now I am scared. What next, all the seats to be black and strange looking people in robes and capes, dotted about the ground during T20 games.

paulbear wrote:

Gerry, you appear to know too much about witchcraft and Warlocks and now I am scared. What next, all the seats to be black and strange looking people in robes and capes, dotted about the ground during T20 games.

Yes, all of the above!
I played cricket a few times at Burley in the New Forest. The ground is on the edge of the forest and New Forest ponies are likely to wander onto the outfield.
I discovered that the village was a centre of witchcraft. One of the characters who lived there was Sybil Leek. She used to walk around the village in her long black cloak with her pet jackdaw, named Mr Hotfoot Jackson, sitting on her left shoulder. Although she is long gone, maybe her ghost (with Mr Hotfoot Jackson) could pay a visit to the Edgbaston ground.

GerryShedd wrote:

As for the curse of Edgbaston, if it exists then maybe we need to find a way of lifting it.
We need to contact one or more male witches ("warlocks", I hear you say - but they do exist) and get them to perform an exorcism on the square at Edgbaston. The half hour before midnight is the ideal time for "good" magic; and all the best warlocks and witches prefer to perform their rituals "skyclad" or naked.
I'm not sure if tickets could be sold and/or whether Sky would be interested in the broadcast rights but it's worth a try.

My immediate thought was to get Barry Fry to do what he did to lift the curse at St Andrews. But then I realised there are no corners at Edgbaston for him to "perform". Maybe a visit to the foot of each floodlight!!

I've always gotten over it pretty quickly, almost instantly, whenever we've been knocked out of the Blast as its the format which matters least to me. Last night I was totally gutted though as I thought we'd played pretty well considering we were missing our overseas players and I really thought the game was ours to lose on numerous occasions.

We got a rollicking start, phenomenal really, 9 4's in a row at one point, Somerset bowled so poorly in the PP though it almost rendered the conditions meaningless, i don't think the pitch was necessarily a road, very fast outfield and obviously short boundaries though. We also managed to run quite a few 2's (Mousley though only a brief innings was good for this) which is hard to do at Taunton. Regardless of the pitch considering the momentum we had and the platform that had been set by the top 3, Hain, Barnard and Kai at numbers 4, 5 and 6 simply have to do better than they did. Yes Somerset adapted to a pace off strategy that worked but 64 off 55 deliveries from those 3 stalled the innings when it looked as though 215 minimum was an achievable target for us. Sam Hain, clearly a terrific player and has been a very long time, almost epitomises our struggles in Blast quarter finals. He's a machine in the group stages, literally nobody scores more runs, but time and again he looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights when we reach the knockouts. Has he ever made a score in the quarter finals? Great catch to dismiss him mind.

We fielded brilliantly I thought, particularly Yates, we looked to be fielding so well it was actually making a difference, we attacked everything.

With the ball when OHD got TKC and only conceded 1 run in the over then Briggs only went for 4 the next, i thought we were turning the screw on them. We're normally good at squeezing teams when we defend. Like has been said that over from Garton which went for 17 just gave Somerset a glimmer, got the required rate below 12 and got Dickson going. Davies, who I thought got his fields right up until then, seemed to panic a little too and brought Gleeson back earlier than he liked searching for wickets. Those wickets came from OHD though and at this point it really was ours to lose.

The last over. Why oh why was Barnard given that last over?! He's a good bowler, we know this, but he's no death bowler, he's been absolutely pumped before a few times at the death (Glamorgan away ODC last year, Notts home Blast this year are notable examples), his natural length is in thr slot, he doesn't bowl yorkers and he doesn't have good change ups. You use him in the middle overs or up front. Im reluctant to be too critical of Ed Barnard, who I think is a brilliant cricketer and person, but once he was given that over (rightly or wrongly) yer arse cannot go like his did. You've got 19, nineteen for goodness sake, to defend. He clammed right up, look at how much his run up slowed, breathing heavy etc. Wides, full bungers, slot balls. Why would you bowl middle or middle and leg to a player as bottom handed as Dickson? It was a shocker. Can never be allowed to happen again.

Fair play to Dickson though, to come in during the 11th over with the opposition a good bit on top and make 71 from just 26 is absolutely clutch. He was unstoppable and single handedly won it for his side.

Ultimately we didn't do a lot wrong but the 1 or 2 things we do wrong, boy did we do them wrong. ..it does seem to be a bit of a thing with us I must say.

Hope Northants win. I'd be ok with Lancs. Please not Somerset or Hampshire though.

A decent performance but didn't deserve to get to finals day again.

In previous years we have been very convincing in the group stage whereas this season we were very inconsistent and personally I think its time we moved away from t20 contracts for likes of Ali, Garton etc.

I dont know mate, we scraped through the group in 2014 when we won it though and I don't remember anybody trying to give the trophy as we didn't deserve it. Likewise nobody deferred their finals day place to us the previous 2 seasons when we smashed the group either.

Re. players on white ball only deals, yeah I agree we could do with moving away from that. The odd one yes but not 3 or so.

Re. death bowling generally, we shouldn't have this issue next season because if fit Jordan Thompson will be doing it.

Over the years, plenty of sides have won the T20 whilst scraping through their groups, Gloucestershire last season and Hampshire in 2010 or 2011, lost half of their games in the group stages. We are nowhere near 'The Finished Article' but some better bowling and quicker scoring in the middle will be needed.

Not surprised with the result when the replacement for Latham had a series average of just 15, the alternative replacement batsmen had never played a first team T20 game, so were unselectable, and we were relying on bowlers with an ecomomy rate of over 9.

The filed placings and bowling changes were badly managed, including having fielders not int he position they were placed, leading to a boundary.

It really is time for a change of captain, and to stop using "white ball" only contracted players.

Andy wrote:

Re. death bowling generally, we shouldn't have this issue next season because if fit Jordan Thompson will be doing it.

yes, and he is pretty damn good at it. one of those Stokes-type cricketers who (cliche) 'puts his hand up' and really, really loves the responsibility. on which point you make a really good point about Barnard's body language that 20th over. Davies's timewasting tactic weren't helping at all, either, (it got to the point where it seemed to me to go beyond tactical necessity, and beyond even gamesmanship to try and get the batters nervous, almost seemed like Davies did it because he was getting booed and he's such a contrary bugger he instinctively feels if he is getting booed he must be doing something right... he really isn't one to go through life like it's a popularity context is he, Davies?) But at that point it was clearly us with the pressure on, especially away from home, batter had momentum, we had the pressure of defending and the timewasting was making Barnard worse, not better.

I agree with pretty much all of what's been said already

I thought we were both 'lucky' and 'unlucky'. we were definitely lucky to put on 190 in the first place, take out that atrocious over Meredith bowled to Yates, and it was awful stuff from an international, take that out and we would have been setting 175 and there's basically no game. the lack of sixes was definitely a factor- I do worry about Kai Smith as a 'finisher' in that sense, as in that position sometimes you just need someone who will clear the front leg and send it over the leg side, and that isn't Smith's game seemingly.

(a word for our running between the wickets we pushed a lot of 2s running with great urgency and clearly out-did them on that front)

I have to say I thought they bowled exceptionally well overs 10-20, they bowled to their fields very well and we hadn't the form or power to just send it over the heads of the men on the wide boundaries.

on the other hand up to over 16 we basically bowled very well and it took an absolute freak of an innings to beat us- in the same position another 5 times would Dickson even manage that again 1/5 times? I don't know but that isn't a knock he or anyone else is replicating often so we were definitely 'unlucky' in that sense

RE: the bowling changes/Lintott. I was actually thinking during the game how well Davies had managed the bowlers, up to 15/16 it worked pretty well, they never had chance to get on top of one bowler and each bowler did pretty well.

With Lintott, they got the sweep out against him right away and I think we were intimidated by Tom Abell being at the crease, and his reputation of playing spin very well (which he does). By the time he was out, it was the 16th over (I think) and at that point probably too late to bowl a wrist spinner. maybe could say we could have put him in against Dickson when he was fresh at the crease when Rew went, but Abell was still there at that point and the seamers and Briggs were bowling well

I take the point that we shouldn't change the gameplan and leave a bowler on the sidelines just for one bad over but by the same token, if we had bowled Jake another and he'd got hit for another crucial 12 I'm pretty sure someone on here would be saying 'why bowl him? he'd already been hit for 15, disastrous decision'.
I'd definitely have given him another, but I don't think its as simple a decision as is being made out whilst Abell was at the crease, and by the time he was gone it was death overs, basically. And had Lintott been given another over and it was disastrous I absolutely guarantee someone on here would be giving Davies pelters for it

We can definitely talk about Hain being a big game bottler, by the way, can't we? That's definitely 6 failures in QFs now (he didn't get anything in the win vs Surrey what seems to be decades back), I love him, and most of our QF capitulations have been characterised by team batting collapses where absolutely nobody has showed up (Saturday being the exception and I'm pretty sure Davies's 71 makes the best single contribution we have got in the 5 defeats), but if we are looking at root causes, our best batsman never showing up for a single QF has to be one of them.

Again, take Yates's slightly freakish knock out and that card is basically Davies, plus failures, and Smith with a marginal contribution at the end but getting his runs too slowly for the match context. In terms of this year I have lost count how many times Hain has middled/near-middled it straight to fielders, he's hit pretty much the same shot straight to mid-off at least 3 and I think 4 times, and 2 more that I recall to midwicket.

Looking back, at first I was slightly critical of Davies's shot selection to get out, not sure he needed to play the high risk option there but we were getting a little bit bogged down, it looked like a 220 par pitch, and he had Hain who had played himself in, Barnard, Smith, Garton Lintott still to come with just 8 overs to go, so I can't be too critical. It turns out, we needed him to stay at the crease more than it looked at the time.

meashambear wrote:

Somerset supporters are the worst I have ever seen. You can tell that the banter to our players is not funny due to the reaction of them when taking a wicket.

For some reason, I thought they would be a knowledgeable & supportive bunch but they just seem one eyed, rude & entitled.

I got a text from my mate that the Somerset fans must have been heckling pretty badly but that was the exact opposite of my experience

I was in the Trescothick Pavilion lower and you couldn't ask for a better traditional set of proper cricket fans, smattering of polite applause for Bears boundaries, polite applause for reaching 50/100/150 and for Davies's 50, and a very generous hand for Davies for his innings when he got out. I guess that's where the members generally hang out, I definitely got the impression many of the people around me knew each other from sitting together for some years, but we shouldn't tar all SCCC fans with the same brush as in the MTP they were absolutely golden