Yeah I'm, fine with him as a signing. Could be a really solid all-rounder for us - his Sheffield Shield stats this season are excellent. But that 10-wicket match haul is doing a lot of heavy lifting in his career bowling stats. As for Stoneman though, I'm a little underwhelmed. He only averaged 33 in D2 last season. That's less than 1 run better than Albert was averaging in D1. That said, he might only be coming in as a squad player, if which case it would be sensible.
Yeah I'd rather we go with our younger players like Albert and Orr to open with Stoneman coming in if there's injuries or loss of form. Edwards is probably not quite as good as Barker with the ball but he's a lot younger and will develop his bowling. He'll be a very dangerous batter down the order as well.
So players are switching teams in the Hundred or signing for teams to align with their IPL franchises. Southern Brave to sign Faf du Plessis. Annoyingly, that means Oval Invicibles will be adding Rashid Khan.
Edwards signing confirmed. Available until the end of May - so 7 CC games. That certainly means we'll be signing a second T20 overseas player then.
It'll be interesting to discover which of our overseas players from last season he'll be replacing. Initially I assumed Pollard, because the 100 will clash with the CPL this year. However, apparently Faf won't be taking the second slot in the top salary bracket (which went to Pollard last year), so in theory he could be replacing any of them. We essentially only went with two last year because of Allen getting injured on the eve of the tournament. But he's really improved in the past 12 months, so I'm assuming that we'll want him back. I think the retained players get confirmed next week.
It's great to see Ellis get an opportunity in a major tournament for Australia - obviously they're stacked for pace bowlers so his chances have been limited. Now he'll be leading an inexperienced bowling attack for them. Hope he does well except for tomorrow.
We're going very well, but there are now only three overs left of Australia's "fifth" bowler (Maxwell/Short/Marnus). We might regret not going slightly harder at them.
Looks like a fair amount of notable domestic players will be heading into the 100 draft on 12 March. Smith and Woakes will apparently be signed by Spirit and Fire as their one centrally contracted players. But that still leaves the likes of Jamie Overton, Lawrence, Willey, Crawley, Mark Wood, Luke Wood, Malan, Ahmed, Topley, Pepper, Gregory, Roy and Clarke for the draft. Alongside Ahmed, we've released Davies, Garton and Weatherley (plus Pollard and Hosein). I make it that we've got 4th pick, 26th pick, and 32nd pick. So we can either go big on our third overseas player and then hope there's still some reasonable domestic quality left when it comes to our 26th pick. Or we can look to take one of the above domestic names and then go for a slightly under-the-radar overseas player. None of the above domestic names are good enough to justify a top salary slot, but the likelihood is that they'd be better overseas options than domestic options when it comes to the 26th pick. Either way, they both need to be able to bat in the top six - with ideally one of them a keeper and the other able to bowl an over or two. In terms of Hampshire players, Dawson, Vince, Currie, Wood, Howell and Turner have all been retained. But not Fuller (or Weatherley).
Hopefully Fuller and Weatherley won't get involved at all then and they can boost our One Day Cup team to finally get our hands on the trophy we should have won at least once in recent years!
Jamie Smith needs a proper rollicking. That's twice he's thrown his wicket away early in his innings. Having said that Brook is more experienced and hasn't done much better.
It's made all the more annoying that Banton is in some serious form recently (albeit mainly in t20) and yet is carrying the drinks.
I'm more annoyed about the lack of a 5th bowler. 10 overs between Root and Livingstone is not an acceptable option. We shouldn't have been chasing more than 280.
