The Cricket Thread

Bowled him!

 

Great start - both openers gone already!

 

A wicket looks like falling every ball at the moment.

 

And there's wicket number 3.

 

Drop. Should be 10-4.

 

Abbas on fire! 20-4.

 

What a morning for Hants - Yorks 25-5 now!

 

Now an edge over the slips for 4!

 

33-6.

 

I can only think that Yorkshire assumed the pitch would be a road after two 500 plus scores at the last match here. Unfortunately for them the conditions overhead were so bowler friendly we just blew them away. Abbas in particular was unplayable this morning.

 

I'm not overly supportive of the move to drop Donald for Weatherley - assuming that we have dropped him, and that the scorecard is right to show Weatherley at no.3.

Gubbins, Vince, Dawson and Brown all now look one place too low. Gubbins, with his experience as an opener, is a natural choice at no.3. Vince, as our captain and best batsman, is a natural choice at no.4. Dawson and Brown have been excellent, and rock solid, at no.5 and no.6.

So not only have we lost Donald's counter attacking threat at no.7 (which could be crucial if this is a low scoring match - eg his runs at home to Gloucs), but we've played around with the order in doing so.

Shame about the 100 run partnership. But at least we got rid of them both before the rain came again.

 

I really don't want us batting today so I'm happy with 158-8. Agree with Weatherley for Donald. Bit of a weird one for me.

 

We can only hope that it's a case of a decent pitch, but ideal bowling conditions in the first session. Yorks took the view that if they could see it out with only 2 or 3 wickets down then they'd be in a good position to push on and score 400+ in their first innings. However, they didn't bank on losing 6 quickly!

Once the conditions had calmed down a bit it was easier to bat, so an annoying stand but hopefully, from our point of view, more reflective of how the pitch should play and enable us to get a sizeable first innings lead (fingers crossed).

 

I would have preferred them going with Weatherley and Holland opening and Organ at 7, like the start of the season. It does seem a bit silly to shove everyone around the order like that. You could argue that they're being a bit cautious with trying to have the equivalent of 3 openers for these conditions and shield Gubbins and Vince a bit more from the new ball, but Gubbins has been at 3 all season so no real need to change it now.

 

Useful partnership for Warks, especially given much of it has been against the new ball.

 

Finn Allen has been retained by NZ in their squad to play WI. So he will miss the entire 100, which in turn means Fuller will miss the entire 50 over cup (because Fuller is Allen's replacement at Brave).

Unless we do play a second overseas bowler, our attack will look something like Abbott, Currie, Turner, Holland, Organ, and Prest. Not exactly inspiring. (I'm guessing Donald, Gubbins, Brown, Albert and maybe someone like Middleton will make up the rest of the side.)

 

Honestly don't really care about the 50 over cup.

 

That's a sad state of affairs tbh. Used to be one of the highlights of the season until the shorter formats came in.

 

I find that surprising, I'm the complete opposite. It's a competition that Hampshire are playing in and indeed won a few years ago. It's not exactly unexpected that our bowling attack won't look all that inspiring, given that several key bowlers are off to play for some recently made up team. It's funny how they all complain about the schedule but are fine with adding a new competition, mainly because it pays them a bit extra!

 

Not in terms of a competition to win. But it's still really useful for the likes of Prest, Organ and Albert.

Organ for example has shown the odd pinch hitting trait in the Championship, so maybe the opportunity to open against the white ball might allow him to work further on that hitting - but whilst still learning how to build an innings and go up and down the gears etc.

But if the bowlers are shipping mammoth scores each game, then it becomes much less useful to ask those young batters to just play recklessly.