stevegrant

Yep. Worcestershire lost in the end, so they're now in the situation of needing results regardless of conditions. Mercifully the last game of the Kookaburra at New Road next week, but I fancy they might try to prepare a pitch that'll produce a result as they need a win - if it means they end up losing instead, it's probably a risk they need to take now.

I would assume the insanely dry period we've had has probably contributed. I think there's generally a preference to high scoring over low scoring in T20 when it comes to preparing pitches, but I'm not even sure the ground staff will have had much say in matters this year with the lack of any real periods of rain to soften the surfaces up, so as a result it's just been a series of roads.

It was an incredible innings, but still one where we will almost certainly feel we could have bowled better to him, especially at the death. We've scored exactly 450 runs in 40 overs against Essex in the Blast this year and only have one win to show for it Fortunately it didn't actually matter in terms of qualification or group placing, I don't think Sussex and Kent would both be able to win by enough tonight to overhaul us, and we couldn't catch Surrey or Somerset, so it was effectively a dead rubber, but it does show a vulnerability at the back end of the innings that we've had throughout this year's group stage. Still think we'll have a good chance at beating Northants, Durham or Warwickshire (final placings in the North group still TBC tonight) on the road, but with the games not taking place until September, christ knows what the squad will look like then. Think it clashes with an international white ball series too

Basically came down to rubbish bowling resource management by stand-in captain Chris Wood, who has pretty much always been one of our death bowlers throughout his career but rather than take responsibility and get the job done he burned his final over with three to go, and then gambled that they'd need too many in the final over that Fuller or Howell bowling pies wouldn't matter.

Another thing, on the scheduling this year... we finish the group stage the quarter-finals are A WEEK before Finals Day in September. Utterly ridiculous, and likely means empty seats at Edgbaston in the four competing teams' allocations.

Great news for Dawson, thoroughly deserved and long overdue, BUT... No worries, we only have a game against the league leaders and then the return against Worcestershire to come in the next few weeks

No idea if it'll be any good and I don't know Rich Edwards so have no skin in the game here, but just seen that a new subscription-based Hampshire cricket news service has just launched: https://thehawk.counterpress.media/ £5 a month, will be interesting to see how it goes. He's certainly right when he says that coverage of the domestic game is pretty thin on the ground these days so there's definitely space for something like this if it's done well.

Haaland only played a couple of games, so a sub keeper moving on is probably nothing to be particularly irked by, but the captain and best player also choosing to do so, when this is now becoming a pattern, should absolutely be questioned. What are the club going to say on a statement other than the bland platitudes that they used? "We offered new contracts but they didn't want to stay in an environment where giving game time to other teams' youth products was deemed more important than playing our own international players"?

Did we? Or did we just have a LOT more money than everyone else at the levels we were competing? The waves of departures we've seen in the last couple of summers don't really point to a lack of finance but players deciding that this isn't the environment they want to play in. We've seen veiled comments and celebrations in front of our director's box from players who have left us and more open comments from relatives of those players that infer that Spacey-Cale is (now/recently) the problem rather than the mastermind.

Surrey declared on 820/9. Some scary looking bowling figures on that scorecard Meanwhile Worcestershire declared on 679/7 and Fletcha Middleton mustered 1 off 23 balls before being pinned LBW

A full round of games where, so far, not a single batting team has put up less than 367. Obviously the weather has likely made it much harder for ground staff to prepare a "result" wicket, but the ball does seem to be having far too much of an impact. And as @Dark Munster mentions, having to use it in a game we would have been targeting to win handily has put us at a huge disadvantage against other teams in the division.

I am expecting us to take a reciprocal approach this season. If teams give us more than the 2000 they are obliged to then we will allow them to have additional tickets at St Mary's. Any team that refuses will just get the bare minimum. Not 100% sure how it works in terms of whether those unallocated away seats will be able to be sold to home fans or not, given the hard barrier on either side of the away end now.

If we've sold 31,500 season tickets, where are the away fans going?

I'm led to believe that we are actively recruiting for NEXT season already. The rules in county cricket are utterly ridiculous, that counties are already allowed to talk to players with expiring contracts regarding signing for next season, so we've been doing that. It can't be all that helpful to their current teams, though - would imagine the non-Hundred counties have a lot of rolling contracts so will have most of their first XI up for renewal this winter, and if any of them have interest from elsewhere, it could be a big distraction.