Also what is the current status of Rushworth?

Why did they run two on the first ball of that over?

meashambear wrote:

We should be doing better than this with the players that we have. We cant bowl teams out twice and we cant build innings totals because key batsmen keep getting out cheaply.........despite the fact that we have a deep looking batting line up.

A few of us said last season that there is something wrong and that Robinson should have been dispensed with along with the other coaches. Our bowling attack is toothless once the new ball has lost its shine. Miles is not good enough, Norwell not fit enough.

How is it that teams like Hampshire & Essex keep rolling out their bowlers season after season and get performances from them whilst ours break down and underperform?

We need a new leader with fresh impetus who demands and gets better performances from the players, we also need to review our player recruitment which is just not good enough. Better standards need setting all round.

To be fair, we had a pretty good red ball season last year, finishing fourth, 37 points off the top. As I recall we were actually in the title race until the last game or two.

I do agree that the bowling is more of a concern this season though. There’s only so many injuries that you can have before you begin to wonder how many of them are bad luck and how many are poor fitness or recruitment.

I’m not quite giving up on this season just yet though as we still have to play some of the weaker teams. We’ve got Somerset twice, Kent, Worcestershire and Notts. Let’s see how things play out before making too many drastic changes, but we do need to recruit another workhorse bowler that can be almost guaranteed to go injury free all season.

Jonathan Trott leads Afghanistan to the semi-finals at the expense of Australia. You love to see it.

BBC reporting it as a side strain, not sure which is correct. Either way, I guess he won’t be involved.

Highveld wrote:

Chris Benjamin, with 16 off 10 balls, did as well as could be expected at the end.

He actually did much better than expected given he’d scored 28 runs in 6 innings before this match. It shouldn’t be enough to save his place in the team though and Yates should replace him for the next one if he’s fit.

To be fair, that’s probably exactly why he’s not playing - it would be a lot to go from a standing start straight into a four day game. I would guess that he’ll be working on strength and conditioning in a much more controlled environment than a T20 would provide

We need to be on 76 at the end of the 11th over, assuming no more wickets

Before the wicket we were about 5 runs ahead

Going to be touch and go with the weather - hopefully they can squeeze in the 5(?) overs needed before the rain arrives. Important that we stay ahead of D/L

Hassan has been very unlucky

I wonder if the potential for rain influenced the decision at the toss.

The later than originally scheduled start for Sky might hamper the chances of getting a result.

The forecast doesn’t look like a definite washout to me, it’ll be showery so all depends on if we get lucky or not with where they go.

With Woakes back it might be Barnard

I think Mousley deserves to stay in the team. He was our leading wicket taker last season after all! Plus 2/23 in the total of 195 today is excellent. It's a shame that his bowling seems to have got better at the expense of his batting

Highveld wrote:

60 runs off five overs from our overseas players, plus zero runs from two balls faced. Combined with the top three failing to go on from a reasonable start, left a situation where Sam Hain and Jacob Bethell both needed to play a large innings to secure victory. while Jacob did his part, Sam was out early, leaving an impossible run chase, as there was no support for Jacob.

Also, good to see Sue Redfern umpiring the game today, she really is an excellent umpire.

But no mention of yet another failure for Benjamin?

I think we’ll see changes for the next game. Mousley at least offers a bowling option (though it didn’t go well tonight) but Benjamin is offering nothing right now.

The wicket keeper isn’t an issue at the moment. I’d play Burgess purely as a batsman.

Sigh. It’s all very well not taking too many risks but you can’t afford to have multiple overs in a row scoring less than a run a ball. Then when you get out it puts so much pressure on those coming in

I get that we’re rebuilding a bit but we really need to start upping the rate

To be fair, you say "the last couple of failures" but didn't we win the group in both of the last two seasons? I know we then lost in the quarter finals but it's still not a bad record, and we can't have won all those games with only one or two players scoring runs (especially given the number of times we racked up 200 or more)

Presumably Moeen should be back soon, and that will strengthen the batting.