I was watching the stream, with no sound and constant buffering, it resembled a Keystone Cops silent movie.
Tom, your predictive skills have clearly evolved so much that you don't even have to tell the rest of us what will happen, you just need to think that the result is a foregone conclusion. This will immediately spur on the 'losing' side, and victory is assured. You can test this on Saturday by simply thinking that Saints have no chance against Leeds, and we will be guaranteed a victory!
tbf, I am an (ex) local, having escaped to the farthest northern reaches of Hampshire (almost Berkshire). I'm not disagreeing with your comment, by the way.
The quality of the stream, or the standard of the Northants batting? I was watching the match via the 'Ageas Bowl live stream', as well as listening to commentary on Radio 5 Live Sports Extra. Whenever a wicket fell, I tried to follow the match more closely, but as there was only one camera, at one end, there were no pictures of any catches, and even a caught&bowled wicket wasn't terribly visible. Still, at least the Island now has electricity in most of their towns,
It's better than the Saints Official site coverage of last nights B Team match, it just constantly lied about it, just telling us that the match hadn't started.
Is this the Saints new tactic? If you put you fingers in your ears and go 'la, la, la', loud enough, you can pretend that nothing is happening. I've watched Ralph do this on several occasions
It is the winning mentality that Vince has installed in the players. Interesting, sky were quite critical of how Butler's team chased last night in the hundred. If course Butler sets the tempo as opener. To me he is nowhere near the captain that Vince is, surely only a matter of time until Vince gets the gig with England, pretty hard to ignore his runs in the blast and tournament win. It looks like Brave will go deep in the hundred and already has runs on the board
It is the winning mentality that Vince has installed in the players. Interesting, sky were quite critical of how Butler's team chased last night in the hundred. If course Butler sets the tempo as opener. To me he is nowhere near the captain that Vince is, surely only a matter of time until Vince gets the gig with England, pretty hard to ignore his runs in the blast and tournament win. It looks like Brave will go deep in the hundred and already has runs on the board. I was at the T20 between England & S Africa and Butler's captaincy was less than inspiring. He seemed to have a plan, that he would not change despite the game evolving on the pitch
Where abouts in northern Hampshire? That's where I'm from! Anyhow, much to my surprise tickets for Southern brave v Birmingham at edgbaston were still on sale so I knabbed one. While I now live in Coventry and as a city I do like Birmingham, I shall be supporting the southerners as the south will always be my home!
In a village called Kingsclere, about halfway between Basingstoke and Newbury. Within sight of Watership Down, just down the road from Greenham Common.
I must admit to being confused by buses in Southampton with 'Kingsclere' on the front, until I found out that there is a Kingsclere Avenue in Southampton.
Fuller, Garton, Jordan at 7, 8 and 9 is serious batting depth Taking a gamble on Garton's form/fitness, by dropping a bowler to accommodate QDK. He's really been struggling with the affects of long covid. But a fit and on form Garton makes that a serious XI - batting, bowling and fielding.
He's played some great innings, but that is the best I've seen from Smeed yet. Usually seems to nail most of his runs over the leg side - but tonight he was really hitting straight and over to the offside too. Proper innings. Proper star.
The next highest score was 21. And more than that, it took someone like Livingstone 20 balls to make it. I'd suggest that's a better indicator of the pitch, rather than Smeed's magic. Short boundaries, sure; weak looking Phoenix bowling attack, sure; good looking Brave batting line-up, sure. But even so, it would take a massive effort to chase this. Smeed has sent them miles over par I reckon, on that used wicket (coupled with our big call to take a risk on Garton).
So trying to be objective, to be fair to Phoenix some of their catches were very impressive. The problem for us is when a few of our batsmen looked like getting comfortable, they then would get out cheaply, so unfortunately despite some promise, no one really managed to bed in. It was odd being seemingly the only southern fan in the stand, while everyone did the arm waves for fours in the first innings, it was literally just me in the second innings. As for Vince, I know he has good innings, sometimes some very good innings as I've seen them mentioned in match reports, but I swear I have never seen him get more than about 30 in any of the England, Hampshire and southern matches I've seen.
