I love Norwell's attitude to bowling. He pounds in off the same run up without any thought to shortening it or slowing his pace down, he keeps on and is relentless. He made a huge difference and it will be an interesting game if we don't make a mess of things tomorrow. Quite surprised at Croft's innings, he was scoring at about 66/100 balls but as he was running out of partners, he didn't try and get on with it and slowed down and in the end when he decided to push it on a bit, he got out. Glad he did because he has punished us a few time before.

Well spotted GS. I often do that when 2 letters are next to each other. I do love my team but I don't think I have cried over them (Even in the 1980's) yet. You will have me worried now and checking for every word to make sure I don't make more mistakes.

A few of us on here did wonder a few tears ago that as his first-class game was so good, would playing one-day cricket change him. He then became a superb one-day player but then he suffered in the CC. Now over the last few years, he has been solid in all formats. Does England await, great for him to get picked but then again, I would really miss seeing him play for us.

Pity about the last 15 overs as I thought we might get 350+. Hain was brilliant again but Yates looks so different to last year and looked like a club player being given his first taste of CC cricket. A few bad shots with the bat leave me feeling we could be about 80-100 runs short.

Yes LE, it happened with Neil Carter all those years ago when you had the feeling that he could get out in the first 2 overs at any stage and eventually they did drop him down the order. In the very big game like finals and semi-finals, he never get us off to great starts which is why so many of them were close games.

I would like to think Stone could play and bowl him in short bursts. Not sure what the Norwell situation is but we need some oomph up front with the new ball but if Stone goes on like this and does not take much of a role in CC games then we will start to wonder what the future holds as he has been permanently injured since we signed him many years ago. What we don't want is medium paced opening bowling on what we presume will be a good batting strip and Lancashire winning the toss and batting for 5 sessions.

Awful and I am annoyed about getting there early from work to get somewhere near to park and then waiting for it to start, only to watch us self-destruct. Another Stirling duck, Bethel is opening for what reason, Brathwaite is too low in the order as is Briggs, since when are Miles, Lintott or Stone better batsmen than him. Poor shot selection and the pitch was fine and a missed opportunity to try and get a few points between ourselves and the other side near us but now it is all very close in the group.

He hit 158* and it was unbelievable to watch but as you say, not much after that. I think someone should point out to him that you don't have to hit the first ball to the boundary.

Exiled Bear wrote:

I'm not very impressed with the Durham commentary. They made out that Benjamin had cheated by stopping the ball when touching the rope, but you could clearly see on the stream that it was fine.
Never mind, we will give them the best medicine by winning and at the moment, it looks very, very simple.

LeicesterExile wrote:

Paul I am watching it on You Tube from the start
I shall do that then, cheers LE.

Would love to be watching it but on the site it just keeps telling me that the live stream will appear when the match starts even though it did so 20 minutes ago.

It did seem strange at the time that Patel was batting that low anyway and then once he gets to the crease as a man known for being a good finisher, he is tactically removed so that a bloke who hasn't faced a ball, can come in and try and win it off the last ball.

Just replayed the last ball that Patel faced and the one we were penalised for and it is 50/50 as to whether or not it was over waist height/ I wouldn't want to be the umpire who gives that but I suppose in a semi/final, you would be able to have another look at it. Well done to all the hardy souls who stayed to watch.

11-12 degrees and a 10% chance of rain but it looks horrible outside and I am not going. There was a thought when I got up that having played so badly in the last2 games, I would settle for an abandonment especially against Notts who are not exactly pushovers.

Not only that, is he batting too low in the order so that by the time he come in, he has too much to do or does not get to face enough balls batting where he does. We have to look at the best way for us to win games and at the moment, it looks like batting first so 'Doing a Grant Elliott' and deciding to bowl is not a good option. Typical of our neighbours to win their first against us after 4 defeats.

Looking as though we will chase 200+ so it begs the question, why did we put them into bat as history says you might as well bat first and we made a mess of chasing down 153 yesterday.

Brooks, Lintott, Miles and Briggs, a total of 9 runs from 18 balls tells it's own story. Why wasn't Briggs up higher, his big hitting in the championship decider last year should have given our management a bit of a clue as to where he should bat. Cannot believe our batting scoring rate in the first 3 games and here we cannot even chase down 153 to win.

And they did not appear to suffer that much in the way they performed and the standards that they set themselves. Even if the ECB suddenly decided to play loads more first-class games, it would mean that if anybody felt they were fatigued, someone else would get a chance. Any batsman with 10 CC games to play would almost certainly get a maximum of 20 innings but that is nowhere near enough. Take into account a big innings of 500+, that would leave almost no chance of getting a 2nd knock and a few weather interruptions also could lead to an opener getting just 15 innings. If that particular opener only played CC games, that would seem like a very short season with little to show for it. Perhaps the answer might be fewer CC games but getting back to playing tourist games which are virtually non-existent now. Either way, less first-class cricket would be a backward step and don't get me started on KP's idea of first-class franchise cricket.

It makes you wonder how the people who make decisions, actually think about the players of the first CC games up to the early 1960's, managed. Before one-day games came along, there were often 30 first class games and that meant 90 days cricket and most players played most games as this was the only format. I bet there were more Test quality players about then and I doubt they thought they would improve with less cricket. Also what is forgotten by the decision makers at the ECB is that less playing time gives you less chance to put things right if you are in bad form. 10 games will never be the answer as weather could reduce the amount you play so it will never be that you get 40 days CC cricket without any interruptions at all. What is needed at the ECB is someone who is a fan and look at the game from their point of view. I wonder how many of them love the game enough to turn up on a cold day in April with 4-5 layers on just to hopefully watch a days play. We need someone like George Dobell to fight the fans corner.

Well if you look on TV now, just about every programme has 'Diverse' presenters, whether or not you think they are any good or not (I think most are not) is up to you but it is happening a lot to TV presenters and announcers everywhere, are they there on merit or for some other reason. Oh! Yes, IMHO.