Still happy about this result....great finish. However, even if we'd lost, it would still have been a good game to arrive at the final over with all possibilities live after losing those early 6 wickets. The SLs set their field up to stop us scoring boundaries, but this opened up the opportunity for steady scoring, so we were still in it right to the end. It still looked to favour the visitors who were bowling well, but they made the fateful decision to assume they had won and allowed us to run three instead of two on the penultimate ball. This threw them into a quandary about the final ball...the bowler (who had been doing well) was then subjected to advice from all sides....so a confused bowler sent a ball down to Plunkett who was going to score a six or get bowled. Plunkett knew what he was doing; the bowler didn't. Fantastic end to the game (well for one team it was ).
Must admit when we were 6 down , I thought that was game over . To get it to the final over was brilliant , to get a draw simply stunning . At Least Morgan got some runs .
Surrey have beaten Notts. So whilst this does drop us to bottom of D1, it stops Notts from pulling away from the relegation zone. We now have two games in hand on both of them - and in theory one win is enough to jump above both.
Am I the only one , with hindsight , to think that the bad miss ( throwing at the stumps of Woakes ) and the very poor throw to the wicket keeper , are a bit suspicious? Part of me says no way because Sri Lanka are Very honest , but there again ..... I Like to think it was nerves .
Smith has finally been dropped from our squad for these back-to-back t20 matches. So with no Vince, it looks like Andrew and McManus to come into the XI. Anything other than two wins, and it really is goodbye. No doubt Smith will return though to the equally important four day game starting on Sunday, alongside Jimmy, Tommo, McLaren and possibly Crane.
Thrilling stuff again. 17-2 in the four non-PP overs so far, against part time spinners on a small ground.
Nah, we like this 'keep wickets in hand so that we can launch a full on attack in the final over to get 140' strategy. We've got Andrew down at nine for god sake! We're just going to be wasting four of our biggest five hitters. At a postage stamp of a ground.
Ten an over from here should be a minimum, given the batsmen available. But even then, 160 shouldn't be anywhere near enough. 14 an over gets us to the 190 which we may well need, but that is some ask.
Yes Afridi might have got out first ball, but you absolutely know he'd have been looking to take Lawrence, Westley and Zaidi down. They are all part time spinners, especially the first two. We've wasted him.
Shock horror, you leave it all to do at the back end of the innings and it doesn't always work. Keep wickets in hand in one-day cricket, when you still have 15 overs left, of course. But in t20 it's an awful strategy. Every over is important. You've only got 14 left after the PP.
Who the **** is coming up with these abysmal tactics? White? Benkenstein? Ervine? Whoever it is needs to go.
Aside from the two games against Kent, Sammy has actually been pretty useless. Very much replicates the team as a whole. If it wasn't for the fact that it'll be far too late, McLaren replacing him for our final few games won't be a bad thing.
What's depressing is that 135 is still better than our scores against Middlesex, Surrey and Somerset - and only one hit less than our score against Glamorgan. Only against Kent (twice) have we passed 141. God knows why they thought that Wheatherly and McManus were both better options that Wheater, even if Adam isn't on great form right now. (Who is?!)
