Window Cleaner

Good win, made it look easy, probably wasn't. The bowlers and batters all turned up today. Surrey on the other hand didn't.

Certainly shouldn't be batting at 5. Don't quite see why he is actually. We didn't need 3 spinners, could have played Albert for all the difference it made.

So, another defeat brought about, as per usual, by a disastrous first innings. This time compounded by some poor catching and quite a bit of soft to hit bowling. Abbott is toast, a great servant but he's doing nothing at all these days. We played 3 spinners but only the "part-timer" bowled any serious number of overs, got a 6 fer too. Two things you'd have to note about this game: The constant whingeing by Lancs for a ball change every time they were getting nowhere fast in our second innings and the awful umpiring by Mallender.....he needs to be put out to grass.

Organ seemed to get a fair bit of movement bowling into the footmarks left by Barker, him being a left-armer. Dawson didn't bowl all that much today, got hit in the face by a rebound from a failed catch attempt by Middleton. On that subject, our catching wasn't up to it's usual standard , apparently Middleton dropped Salt fairly early on in his innings. Crane and Vince also dropped what looked to be straightforward catches. We'll need to bat with discipline again tomorrow morning, cos with Brown in at 5 we look a bit short on quality, dependable batting.

Hah, doesn't fail often. Give them a bit of Saintsweb forum stick and they get wickets right away. Doesn't seem to work with the batters though

Watched a bit today. We don't look good enough in any department. Need a serious overhaul next season with at least one international class test batter added. For that we'll need to offload either Abbott or Abbas unless we can get an England man. No problem, neither of them looks particularly dangerous at the moment.

Another total debacle. Shîte batting and the bowling is no better. Lancs scoring at nigh on 5 an over. They need to get us a real opener, capable of seeing of the new ball in difficult conditions.

Yes, better now though. Bowling is awful. Second team bowling isn't what you need here.

Don't see why we should lose against Somerset this evening. We have every chance of beating them, just as they have a chance of beating us, the T20 is like that. As for Surrey , they've already lost two out of 6, same as us. Anyway we just need to make sure we don't have too many catastrophies against the poorer sides and we should make top 4. Turner indeed bowled well yesterday and Albert did some decent hitting. The fact that their leg spinner took two wickets and pinned us down to only 4 an over suggests to me that the wicket was especially prepared for him. Awful ground Radlett, seemed to have a filled-in irrigation trench running right across it.

Did we ? I thought the two innings were fairly similar. Early losses, then some decent hitting followed by a falling off. The worm thingy on the live stream showed a similar pattern. Wood and Whiteley got us back on track though. Ellis pushing back a certain 6 near the end helped no end.

Oh yes it is (was) !

164, probably not enough. We'll need to bowl well.

Good start apart from Vince holing out for 5. But it's a poncy, little, turnip patch ,out ground so we'll probably need 220+

Well that was a good watch. The Essex tubby wicky give out for nothing, probably the same as McDermott.

With the bowling that we have available , I'd say that against decent sides 180 is absolument "de rigeur". Crane and Ellis went for 89 between them yesterday, over half of our batting total. Maybe just an impression but Ellis looks to be trying too hard at times, loses accuracy and gets tonked. Prest made runs but a bit on the slow side really.

Hants cruising to a win. Middx bowling looks pretty poor though. Still ,good to watch Hants hitting at about 10 an over.

Catastrophic start to our T20 campaign. But what can you expect it's a scratch side to give everbody a game.

At the end of the day it's really rather simple. We spent what about 140 million on players who don't have (as of yet) the aptitude for the PL. We tarted about by sacking a manager who was getting the job done and appointed two others who clearly weren't up to the job. We got relegated which is exactly what we desreved for all of that. I mean Suleymana and Tall Paul for 40 million of so, we could have got a really decent player for that. What you want when you're spending those sort of sums is end product and those two didn't provide any of that.

So, we made a pretty good score in the end, seemed to take a while though. Kent batted out the 26 overs left to them at the end with no apparent difficulty. We'll have to hope for conditions that favour our bowlers a bit more this morning, otherwise we'll have difficulty bowling them out again. Not that I think that we have much chance of the Championship this season but with Warks already winning and Middx looking in difficulty against Surrey we need to win this one to be thereabouts.

Wheels have come off, 159/5. Same old problem, quick'ish bowlers on an overcast morning.

That we shall see, 2 wickets down this morning already. Still hopeful of 300 though.

Organ dropped for tomorrow's game, replaced by Weatherly in the 12. Don't know if that means he'll open with Middleton though. Barker back in the 12.

Well of course it isn't, but it allows players the choice of not playing the 4 day game if they have no test aspirations. Also limits the choice of overseas players and no doubt puts up the asking price for any desirable player to boot.

Chaps, it's only football, life goes on. Get a grip.

But worldwide gig cricket didn't exist in those days. England based players played for their county in the summer and took whatever winter role they could get. We used to live near the Sainsbury's , Peter delivered paraffin in the winter when he couldn't get a coaching job in Oz for the winter. True that was much earlier than the 90s though. Anyway I suppose the white ball only players, big stars apart, get less than the all competitions players; There are also a good few who don't play much white ball cricket. Barker plays very little and Gubbins, Abbott and Abbas don't seem to play in the short formats. Perhaps they get less than some. But the real problem is the fringe players who don't seem good enough for some competitions but are kept on anyway. I'm of thev opinion that if we farmed out Donald, Weatherly and maybe even Organ we'd have enough savings for a solid opener. Weatherley seems to be a bit "pistoned" as we say in France. Even got a hundred contract and hardly ever played. Might be a bit of nepotism somewhere in the mix. Then there's the case of Crane, no idea what we're doing with him.