The Cricket Thread

Gloucs taking as much time as possible between overs.

 

This is blatant time wasting - hoping for the rain.

 

Shot Vincey!

 

Just need another 4 overs at this rate.

 

Ah, here's Fuller - and he hits his first ball out of the park!

 

No idea why Gubbins came in at 3 TBH.

 

4 down!

 

Irrelevant TBH.

 

Finish it this over please!

 

Phew!!!!

 

Done

 

It was definitely getting gloomier. Bloody well done Abbott for cleaning up the tail so quickly after lunch and well done to the batters for getting their fingers out chasing it down. I was sure the rain would beat us so despite Surrey winning we can be pleased with this round. Gained a point.

 

Good win and Surrey still have to go to Lancashire for the last match.

 

Surrey's remaining fixtures:

Warks (h)
Northants (a)
Yorks (h)
Lancs (a)

Us:

Yorks (a)
Northants (h)
Kent (h)
Warks (a)

If we can match Surrey's result in the next round of fixtures I really fancy our chances. As then we'll have 2 home games in a row against 2 lower half teams where we can prepare a wicket to suit our bowlers. Yorks away is our toughest remaining fixture by a distance.

 

Solid day, solid win, of course. Can't really ask for much more. But at the end of the day, Gloucs are bottom of the league - and we're a week closer to the end of the season, without having made any meaningful ground on Surrey. They are closer to the title than they were four days ago.

Naturally we could barely have done any more (23 points out of 24 is very good). So zero complaints from me. But it's still Surrey's week. And now the roles are reversed next week, when we're the ones with the tougher fixture. Coming into this triple header, I thought two wins (vs Warks and Gloucs) and a draw (vs Yorks) would represent an excellent return. But in reality we'll probably going to have to win all three just to keep in touch.

In a weird sort of way, it's a shame that Lancs aren't closer to us. If they too were within a win of Surrey, their final game at home to Surrey could help us massively. It would be the best chance of a Surrey defeat, if Lancs were going for the title themselves. But at present they're 31 points adrift - it'll be almost impossible to cut that gap over the course of three matches by, say, 12 points based on bonus points alone. So it would still need Surrey to slip up elsewhere anyway.

 

At the end of the day we can only control so much. The weather and what Surrey do are out of our hands. If we win all 4 remaining games and so do Surrey then you have to say fair play to them. All we can do is keep the pressure on and hope they slip up. Today we were playing the weather as well as Gloucs so I'm very satisfied with how this round went in the end.

 

Livingstone's switched up about 4 gears!

 

Oops.