The Cricket Thread

Rilee must have only started to feel ill in the last few hours, to leave us short. Although then again, even if we did have notice, who in the 2nds would we have brought along? Soames? Organ? Harinath? To be honest, Holland is probably just as capable as scoring as they are.

(What I don't understand is Alsop. We keep on naming him in the squad, but Solent believe him to be injured. Which would explain why we've basically been picking Fuller as an out-an-out batsman even before today.)

 

Sat at the county ground waiting for Glos Hampshire. I can confirm that none of the Hampshire guys will be troubling Saints with their football ability having just watched them warm up

 

Ultimately we're being punished for not picking up an overseas batsman. To go in with just one overseas player is criminal, especially when we're relatively light on batting.

Look at Middlesex. They've just lost Mujeeb (and already knew they were losing ABDV for a handful of games), so have gone straight out and picked up Hafeez instead. You can sign overseas players once the competition has begun!

 

I might be tempted to promote Fuller up to 3, rather than promote half of the team up one place.

 

Rejoice. We don't finish the PP three (or more) wickets down.

 

That's easily our best batting powerplay of the tournament so far.

 

FFS Donald.

 

I'm relaxed. A quick fire 40 from an opener is what I look for. Gets you off to a good start, sets you up for the rest of your innings.

Of course you'd rather they go on make a 70+ score, but they're relatively few and far between. Donald has done his job in my book. Especially on this surface, which traditionally gets harder to score on. Invariably you need to do your scoring in the PP.

 

True, but normally you'd have a few specialist batsmen coming in after you. And Northeast is not in good form.

 

Having not promoted Fuller, I might now change tact and promote McManus instead. Without Van Burren, it's quite possible that Smith will be Gloucs' only spinner (I can't recall if Taylor has been permitted by the ECB to bowl again yet). And ideally we want Lewis facing Smith. He's two overs in already.

 

Grrr. Lewis could have had most of an over at Smith here. Hey ho.

 

And here comes the collapse to 140 all out.

 

Certainly coming across like a typical Bristol wicket. Runs in the PP, singles and wickets afterwards. 160 would most likely be a good score, but given we're short on batters, we probably won't get there.

 

Just not good enough from Northeast. He had to stay in.

 

Getting runs off Tye's last two overs will be hard (especially if we've lost two or three more wickets by then). So we almost need to treat the 16th over as if it's the 18th over.

 

So predictable.

 

Just looking at the matches here so far. Sussex chased down 160 with two balls (and three wickets) to spare. Gloucs chased down 126 (vs Kent) with seven balls (and five wickets) to spare. Gloucs chased down 149 (vs Middlesex) with four balls (and two wickets) to spare.

And then there was a total anomaly of Essex scoring 206, and Gloucs falling 25 runs short.

Implies that you are right in the game with 160, but 140 is unlikely to be sufficient. Unless we have two big overs, we aren't getting 160.

 

Need Morris to come up with something or we're going to fall way short of a competitive total.

 

Lewis, this is a T20 not a test match.

 

We're only five down, with just a handful of overs left. But due to a mixture of a long tail and a difficult wicket, we're making it look like we're eight or nine down and just trying to bat out the overs.