I was a little taken aback by some of the comments on the X (Twitter) feed. Obviously, like everyone else, I was very disappointed by the performance against Notts but it seemed a little over the top. One was even calling people like Albert, Middleton and Stoneman "minor counties standard" or something like that. Yes, they're not as consistent as some other county players (yet) and we all want to see more bigger scores from them but I'm sure they weren't making those sorts of comments when Albert was scoring a ton against Surrey last season, he's won many one-day games for us over recent years. Everyone was happy when we won the first game, against Yorkshire.
I would be happy to try Albert up to open and Orr in the middle order (or even Orr to open, agree it's time for him to have his go). The club can't be blamed for Neser getting blocked by Cricket Australia and then Edwards getting injured. One can never tell, of course, but I reckon that Edwards would have been a really good signing. Obviously Hampton hasn't worked out but you can see how they were trying to get a player in to replace elements of both Vince and Abbas.
In hindsight, going with a direct batting overseas replacement would have been better and there's still time for that later in the season of course.
If we get thrashed by Warwickshire (and they do look strong themselves, admittedly) then it would become more of a concern but hopefully the Notts game was just a blip that every team will get at some point during a season.