And back to the cricket….

Very early to say but Gilchrists figures have not been particularly good since it was announced he was joining us. Im not at the ground but he doesn't exactly look a marquee signing.

Very disappointing, changing the mentality of this squad is going to take some work.

Considering there is already a decision which has been made which is to reduce the number of T20’s in the season, I should jolly well hope that membership prices are not going up!

I’m no longer a member as life circumstances have changed in the past 5 years however for those of you who still pay I’d not be at all surprised if you were a bit cheesed off with that remark from the CEO.

Wasn’t happy when he left but can’t say I’m happy that we are now bringing him back. A key player back in the day but surely we should be looking at players for the long term.

Doesn’t say much about our ability to recruit talent really, there have been a lot of bowlers moving this season.

This could get messy….quite quickly!

OHD is not having a vintage season so far, I’m not sure what his stats were last year when using the kookaburra ball. Hopefully when the Dukes comes back he’ll be back in the wickets!

Who is Jani? Must have completely missed this as I have absolutely no idea who he is.

For goodness sake Highveld I wish you would shut up. No one said they were the best opening partnership, what was said (I can’t remember by whom) was that looking at the stats over a certain period they stacked up amongst their rivals reasonably well.

This was at a time where you were, as usual, constantly making comments. The sort of comments you make at every opportunity.

The people on this forum know enough about cricket to know what they see. It is not about being able to say ‘I told you so’.

A lot of people were not convinced about Davies and have been concerned by Yates’ inconsistency however you seem to delight in their struggles and relish the opportunity to put the boot in and let everyone here know just how smart you are.

Tedious.

Apologies for the rant…..I blame the country’s ‘best opening partnership’ for my frustration.

The kookaburra ball experiment too is not helpful. I was thinking of going along next Thursday (as its my birthday and taking the day off from work) but I have no desire to see the end of what could be a high scoring draw where the bat has not been consistently troubled by the ball. The weather may be great, but it could be particularly boring.

Is this ball being used for the rest of this round of fixtures? Quite fancied going later in July but if it’s going to be like this I don’t think I’ll bother. Watching a high scoring draw is not the most enthralling.

Granted I was only watching via Sky but what disappointed me last night (asides from the loss) was that when Garton was out under pressure and Sylvester was being hit about there did not seem to be much support from the team. As I say at the ground it may have been different but on the screen they looked quite lonely out there.

When we had Brathwaite and Bresnan a couple of years ago, whilst limited playing contributions, they seemed to offer bags loads of personality and encouragement to the team. This did seem to be missing yesterday.

I would have hoped for more from Latham in this regards, a massively experienced international captain getting people’s ear and trying to keep heads up and offering bits of advice.

Bamber is indeed showing signs of being a great signing. To be fair to Rushworth, he was excellent in his first season I thought (without checking I’m sure he took 50+ wickets). Unfortunately injured since!

Will we make it to tomorrow?

Nail on the head.

We are an average side, our recruitment has not been great when it comes to red ball cricket for a few years.

We’ve been a bit unfortunate with overseas players picking up injuries but that’s the same across the country.

Lots of younger inexperienced players in and around the squad though. Hopefully we can get the coaching side of things set up correctly to help them flourish.

Careful, you know it's not permitted to praise our "woeful" opening batters here!

Looks like it could well be a struggle to bat today, a bit overcast with winds and some rain in the air.

Bizarre, right after the signing of the NZ test captain.

No news on the head coach still or anything about the end of season review.

There seems to be a real lack of leadership at the moment.

It’s interesting to see how his profile and reputation has skyrocketed in such a short space of time.

I hope it’s not a case of too much too soon, he will experience bad patches as all players do so I hope he has the right support network around to get him through.

For us it’s going to leave us even further depleted in the batting line up.

What about if you look at his averages and then look at them again without his top score!?

There was no vendetta against him, he simply did not perform for two season but was given more chances than others.

He had some great debuts though!

"As Albert Einstein said "To keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, is madness"."

A bit like a certain poster wanting to drop Yates and Davies for the past three seasons.

A fairly disastrous morning session! It would be quite an achievement to battle back from here.