Window Cleaner

I've watched all 4 games so far, mostly pretty good stuff. Yesterday we struggled with their Power Play bowlers, who it must be said bowled pretty well, pinned us down. Our bowling was lacklustre yesterday because on that sort of wicket and short boundary, seamers are going to get hit if they stray off line by a nanometer or so. We lacked a tidy bowler for yesterday's conditions and 177 wasn't enough.

Indeed excellent bowling by Currie. I see that the two South African batters are called up for their series against Zimbabwe, end of juin I think. Will that leave us 2 batters short for the T20?

I suspect that the players know that it's not good enough. The question being can they do anything about it. For me it's roughly the same situation as the football, when the players aren't good enough then there's not much that they can do about it really. From my point of view, we're trying to run on a low cost basis and haven't recruited better players for some reason or other. I'm all for giving home grown a chance but some of them get more chances than others. We've shipped out players as useful as Middleton, Prest and Albert without a second thought so something's not quite right there. Also the Barker situation isn't helping, although as a bit of an oldie I don't know how performant he'll be after a year out of first class cricket. Perhaps he'll play some white ball, doesn't usually. Yet again another Bank Holiday Monday goes by with no cricket, can't be good for the finances.

Well I don't think you can compare Abbas and Baker anyway. To see Wheal opening the bowling saddens me, he is just a plug away average seamer who'll always be a bit part player in any respectable side. Turner needs to be told to stop bowling short, good pace, but it's oft so wild. The batting is a catastrophy, any decent seamer who can bowl straight and pitched up will as likely as not destroy us. As I've said before, we need change from the top down.

Something is evidently radically wrong at the club. Perhaps they've all got some virus or other but I'd doubt that. The dropped catches, the wild bowling apart from Abbott and the shaky batting and village green shots isn't just a coincidence in my view.

To me Prest looks like a Vince bis, just can't resist a swish against wide balls. The rest is just undisciplined rubbish right now, club needs a total shake-up, starting with White and the head coach.

T20. What we need right now is a bowler, our bowling is lamentable this morning. Prest not helping once again by dropping a routine catch in the deep. We'll lose here unless the weather intervenes.

Doesn't look a particularly difficult thing to do though. Technique against accurate bowling sorely lacking. Abbas isn't even that fast, but it's straight and not short. Think we might even be asked to follow on.

Depends on the new owners I suppose. From what was said by the commentary team today, it would seem that the affaires are still being run by the old team until about October. Wheal opening the bowling says cut priced affair to me.

Well, as we wasted a goodly part of the advantages given by the new ball and the helpful wicket this morning, we are now paying the price. Two of the dropped catches were just ordinary, don't miss those. Wicket for Abbott, umpire couldn't refuse that one, probably tried though.

Rain stopped play this morning. Might be a fitting end to a bit of a dull match because it's pretty obvious that there won't be a winner anyway.

Batter's paradise? We'll see when it's our turn. Mind you our inoffensive bowling must be helping them a bit. Organ is just a nothing bowler unless he gets outrageous help from the track. Ooh a wicket, 492/9

Good'ish start, had Durham at 82/4, mainly due to Abbott. Then some really, really rank bowling from Baker, how did he get an England central contract ! Durham now past 200 with 5 down, Dawson and Organ plugging away, Dawson's only wicket came from a pretty awful ball to boot. Must say, although it's early days as of yet, that I am singularly unimpressed by the side assembled for this season. Expected much better.

Right now Lens are a bigger club than Saints.

Doesn't help us though. We'll see when he gets here. Three teams won in the latest round of games so we've slid down the table a bit. Notts looking fairly impressive, perhaps they've just played poor teams. As for Hampton, well he hasn't convinced me as of yet, doesn't look able to offer anything that we don't have already with Kellly or Jack. What's the wicketkeeper situation for the T20, is one of the recruits a wicky or will that be Brown, who's not really a short format player ?.

Don't expect much cricket today, weather looks pretty awful. That will be a 13 point draw then.

Our bowling doesn't look anywhere as near as incisive as later stage of our innings Somerset's . Wec have to find another bowler if Baker is going to be called up by England.

So Hants all out for 336, 152 ahead. Bit of a collapse after a good start to the morning. Ball looks to be moving about a bit. Some hitting from Abbott, Wheal and eventually Brown took us to a reasonable total and 2 batting bonus points. Now we'll have to hope to get some Somerset wickets quickly because I don't think the weather forecast is great for tomorrow, might have changed since i looked though.

We'd probably know that if the commentary girls were a bit less dopey. Normally they're ok but on of this morning's sounds a bit clueless.

Need to finish them off now because these are free runs that we're giving them.

Well yes, when i wrote that we we're getting manhandled so to say by Lamonby and Vaughan, including a lot of leg side stuff to the left hander. As a lefty myself I found it much easier to score down the leg side, something about how we "cackhanders" situate ourselves in space or some scientific stuff like that. And the principal culprit was Hampton.

Depends really. I don't know the real circumstances so I couldn't say. Anyway relatively good news because today we look to be a bowler short at least. Hampton isn't a Barker substitute.

Match ended bad bad light with Hants 300/5. Still a good draw. Good batting from Gubbins, Albert and Prest. A win might have just been possible if we'd been able to up the rate a bit and no bad light but a draw is a good result for us, leaving Surrey still without a win.

Surrey whingeing for a ball change this morning. Seems to be the new modus operandi when you're getting nowhere otherwise. So far the umpires have turned them down.

What exactly is the point of sending in nightwatch rabbits who can't bat to face 10 overs or so against good bowlers?