140 was way above par for me. But David did his best. The difference was that when Sowter faced his three four balls, he got Curran back on strike every time. Whereas David got stuck at the other end when four successive dot balls were bowled. If David faces three of those four balls, he might have won it.
Needed to break that partnership. Looks like Surrey might have a bit of a tail on them from here. Shame that Yorks' batting is just as bad today as it was against us.
Now that we've broken the back of this chase, hopefully we'll promote Donald when we lose a wicket. Could do with winning this asap.
Meanwhile, Leicester's slips from 1.357 to 1.302. Given that we've secured at least 2nd, Tuesday against Kent is something of a free hit. If we're batting second, we should go all-out to try and chase it down in sufficient time to improve our NRR to above 1.302. Even if it means burning our wickets and being bowled out for a 180 run defeat, for example.
Brave need to have a clear out. Conway needs to go, he's not suited to The Hundred, SR isn't good enough. Our central contract player is Archer which is a joke as he may never play again. Get rid of Fuller. Allen's been poor, he can go as well. Open with Vince and get David higher up the order.
I'm not sure there is anything we can do about Archer being our central contracted player - it's largely in the hands of the ECB. I suppose there's a possibility that he might lose his central contract, but I don't think he will. We might even find that it works in our favour next year - I'm not convinced that Jofra has much of a career in red ball cricket going forward, and next year the 100 will almost certainly clash with the test matches against either WI or SL. So most of the central contracted players won't play in the 100 - but maybe Jofra will (if he ever recovers!). Completely agree about Conway. We had our fingers burnt with him two years ago - so we've only got ourselves to blame for signing him a second time. If Du Plooy is willing to take a major wage reduction (probably right down to band five) I would retain him. But otherwise, he would have to go. I'm not sure we can once again justify having him as one of our top eight players (which would be the case if he was in the top four bands). To have him in our top band is horrendous. My ten retentions would be Vince, Jordan, Mills, Overton, Garton, Ahmed, David, Du Plooy (if wage reduction agreed), Ackermann and potentially Santner. Or if not Santner, then only retain the nine. I don't think any of those players are being underpaid and so at risk of demanding a move into a higher bracket (maybe Overton at a push). Whereas at other teams the likes of Sowter, Atkinson and Sams would all be very justified in seeking a higher bracket, and hence potentially a move away. Davies, Fisher, Chohan and Weatherley can all join Fuller and Conway in leaving. And then we draft either one or two new overseas batters, depending on whether Santner stays. We also need to find a decent county-level batter. The likes of Hain, Pepper, Wells and Holden were all available in the bottom two price bands, but we had already retained Weatherley, Davies and Fuller at that level.
That was some useful hitting from Liam. Because whilst we definitely want Fire to win, we could do with it being as small a win as possible.
We're right still in it. So much so that there's even a scenario - albeit an incredibly unlikely one, that will never happen - where we could lose our final match and still qualify. But lets ignore that! Realistically we need to beat Originals. It would need to be a fairly big victory in order to overtake them on NRR. But even if we didn't manage to overtake their NRR, just winning the game would send us through if: Oval beat Rockets (by any margin) tomorrow And Superchargers beat Fire (by any margin) on Tuesday (if Fire win this game right now by any margin) Or Fire beat Supercharges (by a very small margin) on Tuesday (if Fire win this game right now by a very small margin) Or Phoenix beat Spirit (by any margin) on Thursday (if Sprit win this game right now by any margin)
Tbf, I don't give much of a chance of beating Originals. We only have two batters in form (David and Jordan) and one of them has played his last game (Santner now replaces David). Then again, spin was so effective at Old Trafford today, that we might be thankful to have Santner joining Rehan and Ackermann.
Well done Fire. They and Superchargers are both still alive. Going into the final round of matches, it's technically six teams fighting for two places. More realistically, due to Originals' superior NRR and Superchargers' awful NRR, it's four teams fighting for one place.
They might find themselves in a little bit of trouble come the final, because that should be it for Zampa and Johnson. They're both in the Aussie squad alongside David - so if David won't be here to play for us on Wednesday, then presumably neither of them will be around come Sunday. Suspect they're all on the same plane to SA. And you can't bring in a replacement overseas player unless they played in the group stage.
