Window Cleaner

Absolutely, no point in having 3 fine wicket takers if you get bowled out for less than 100 a couple of times in a season.

But only for blokes if I remember correctly. Don't think that homosexuality between women has ever been illegal. Frowned upon certainly but not illegal. (I found that out from Gentleman Jack, unless of course it's just a bit of poetic licence to fit the story line )

I see that Hassan Azad has been released by Leics. Left-handed opener averages just under 40 . Is he any good ? Or is D2 bowling just that bad, although they were in our group last year weren't they ?

Ah! One last reflection on the season. Ball changes: Has to be sorted out. Every time that the bowling side don't think they're getting anywhere fast they start whingeing for a ball change. Yesterday Gubbins and Fuller didn't look in any particular difficult and then they got the ball changed for one that started zipping about again. It's like having a semi-new ball whenever you fancy it. I'm not sure what exactly are the criteria for a ball change but they have to be tightened up. It wastes time and breaks up the rythm of the game.

So at the end of the day we lost second place because of the 2 points deducted for slow over rate although Lancs had 6 points deducted for prior misdemeanors. The moral of all this ? Don't lose matches. 8 points for a draw is better than or the same as all the bonus points that you can obtain in a match. See you all next season.

They need all of them. It's like United and Chelsea, they don't need the players they buy, they need for other teams not to have them.

I'm not convinced that either of them will improve our first team in the near future. Seemingly the selectors aren't either. Prest is erratic as of yet and if he'd been capable of opening this season, then I'm sure he would have done so. The fact that we played Brown as a batter with his fingers taped up for the last two games tells me the management don't see Prest as an option-------yet.

Don't see what difference it makes, they're both one day cricketers. and we have far too many of those already. For next season we need at least an opener and a spinner who'll actually play a few championship games. If we aren't getting Abbas back for the whole season then we'll need another quick bowler, Wheal isn't good enough. Brown hasn't shone with the bat in the later part of the season, I ask myself if we really needed to play him at all with his fingers taped up. There must be other options...musn't there ?

Great, finished the season with a batting shambles, although we did get close enough. The "committee" surely can't ignore the need for an opener again now. Depends whether they have the funds available to get a reliable one I suppose.

Kent are going to beat Somerset so that's not really on us. I can see Yorks beating Glos anyway because they're moving towards their target at the moment. Could collapse of couresbut that's on them and not us. Losing second place wouldn't be good though. Perhaps Surrey will bat a bit better second time round.

Some awful batting again this morning. Might not even finish second . The batting coach just has to improve the technique of a lot of players this winter; Either that or get other players into the side. They just can't seem to handle the quick straight'ish ball.

Hah! At last a wicket. Sibley chases an awful ball down the leg side and gets caught behind. Even better Holland bowls the next batter. On a hat-trick then.

What a shîte bowler Wheal is. Why isn't Fuller bowling?

Hants look very flat today, then again so does the wicket. No Abbott either. Looks like 4 very uninteresting days.

I don't think that there's any problem with keeping Fuller, think he signed on for another year back in June. I see that Liam Dawson was the most economic of England's bowlers in the T20 in Pakistan yesterday 4 overs for 26, didn't get a bat. Some of the others got absolutely hammered in Pakistan's 10 wicket win, a rarety in T20 cricket I believe. Looks as if Glos and Warks will be going down to D2 for next season. As Warks won the CC last season that's some come-down for them. Don't think much has changed in their line-up, just that players haven't performed as well as they did last season. Think we need to be a bit wary of that next year, some of the bowling hasn't been all that good at odd times this season and they're not getting any younger. To me, and I've watched the streams a lot, there's a lack of accuracy at times that gives the batters a chance to get in. Barker and Fuller being the main culprits there. They take wickets to be sure but they sometimes give away free runs, mainly behind the wicket. At times on wednesday last, Vince just didn't know what to do to stop the flow of runs through the gully-third man region. If he put in a 3rd man the bowlers allowed shots through the gully, if there was a deep gully they went through 3rd man. Glos have just collapsed. When I watched a stream on their site, their chairman (or whatever) was waffling on about building the side and striving for excellence etc , obviously doesn't watch a lot of their games then, them having won just 1 game out of 13 so far. I see that there's a new performance plan to beat Australia and other national sides. To me that's just complete tripe. The way to win test matches isn't by reducing county championship matches in number. It's probably playing less international series all of the time. To me plenty of fine young cricketers are being lost to gig cricket. Look at Weatherly this season. Signed on for the Brave, no doubt made plenty out of it and didn't get a single game, that's not the way to improve our test standard. It's easy money and possibly makes them lazy. I seem to remember Banton being talked of of being the next big star a couple of years back, think he hardly plays first class cricket nowadays, too busy gleaning money from gig and short format cricket.

I don't think you can say so and so hasn't performed well. The trouble is that on 3 occasions they've collectively failed dismally. Plus on two of those occasions the bowlers let the opposition off of the hook a bit as well. Why even yesterday we dropped a couple of catches, the culprits being pretty reliable fielders usually. We need to sort out the spinner situation, if Crane isn't of any use in 4 day cricket to us then we'd as well let him move on, because yesterday we needed a real spinner.

Ah zut, I've just seen that he goes back to Surrey next season. Missed the boat there then. What do Surrey need with another opener ?

Although I have no idea whatsoever concerning his contract status, if Warks go down, as they probably will if we beat them next week, I might think that Sibley is just the sort of opener we need. Got over his bad patch and is now scoring runs again on a pretty regular basis.

Surrey are going to win anyway so it probably doesn't really matter all that much. However, our season has been blighted by three shockingly bad, first innings batting performances and if we've any pretentions of winning the County Championship before our 3 main bowlers become less effective then we just have to eradicate these batting disasters. That would mean, in my opinion anyway, signing a tenacious opening batter and relegating Holland to the second XI and 1 day cricket as a consequence. I don't think Donald is going to make the grade as a 4 day batter, probably replace him with Prest.

Pity we managed to lose 2 wickets in the last few overs of the day though.

With Yorks having to follow on against Surrey, what we do here probably doesn't make much difference in the title race anyway.

Hmmm, Kent don't look to be in too much difficulty this morning. A few balls that have beaten the bat but they're scoring a few runs nevertheless.

T'is an already used wicket apparently. Obviously too much cricket at the Aegeas this summer. Need to sort that out for next year. More out grounds perhaps, couldn't say where though.

So Kent 20/3 at stumps. Shouldn't get too excited about that yet though because 2 of the 3 were lower order nightwatch.. err people (or is it nightwatchers in inclusive speak?). Did get Compton though. We just need to skittle them for less than 100 and knock off the 200 or so runs needed to win. Still no batting points though.

Does that make our performance better in some way or other then? We were playng the title and we've blown it on the first day of 4. Lancashire and Essex are playing for nothing whatsoever, whatever happens there makes absolutely no difference.