Durham Match Thread 2024

[captaincolly]

The Foakes issue is back spasms and seems as if Smith was keeping wicket ...unfortunately ( for him and quite probably us ) he didn't get any runs. Could do with him getting a double hundred before the squad is named.

[Durhamfootman]

yes, I only noticed earlier that Foakes wasn't keeping

[Durhamfootman]

Campbell hasn't ruled out Bedders playing in some of the T20's. What he said was that DB has had a couple of ops on his shoulder which makes it harder for him to throw the ball (although he looked pretty sharp to me on Saturday.... saved a run a couple of times by getting the ball back really fast on the turn) and that the reason he's in such good red ball form is because that's all he has had to concentrate on. He pointed out that we can have up to 4 OS players in the squad and that Turner and Dwarsius may not be available later in the comp once we get to the KO stages, so we have to think outside the box

sounds like platitudes to me, but we'll see

he sounded confident about our bowling stocks with the arrival of Parky and Ackers, plus Pottsy will be available at times this year, which he wasn't last year. He also mentioned Carse, but I tried to pretend that I didn't hear that. He said that they formulated a lot of plans during pre season in Zim and said they had come up with a new approach for the PP's....... Jeez, I hope so... we were dreadful last year in the 10 bookend overs.

[captaincolly]

Yes, optimistic talk and we do seem to have a stronger squad this year but I am still not confident it'll be a successful campaign. Carse having a nightmare in the CC and I suspect the T20 won't be a confidence booster - unless he doesn't bowl! He could be useful with the bat.

[Durhamfootman]

well.... we are still short of batters. The arrival of Ackermann only means that we now bat down to number 6, instead of the 5 we batted down to last year

To be fair, the batting last year was too light because our chosen bowlers kept conceding astonishing amounts of runs in the PP and at the death, so if we can find a way to fix that then the batting depth may not be a problem

[Durhamfootman]

Bowling economies from last year. Minimum 7 matches which ought to give a fair indication of our main bowlers

Sowter (14) 6.73
Raine (13) 7.00
Turner (14) 7.50
Parnell (9) 9.11
Trev (14) 9.54
Bas (9) 11.28
Glover (7) 11.21

the top 3 bowled predominantly in the middle overs, where we were reasonably competitive. It was the start and finishes that absolutely killed us last year

[Durhamfootman]

I still remember the Notts game last year, where we batted first and got to 158, when Robbo fell, with 2.1 overs remaining. I thought we'd get to 180 easily, yet we only managed to score 10 runs

Then Notts hauled us in in the last over, despite Sowter and Raine picking up 3 wickets for 35 runs

all told, with an over from Turner too, we picked up 4-45 in 9 of the overs and 1-125 in the other 10.2 overs. Bas, as well as *modded* about for 2.1 overs with the bat, went for 37 off his first 2 overs and wasn't trusted to bowl the last over, so we tried to defend the last few runs with Trev in the final over

Every key period of play in the match was a shambles and pretty much summed up 19 of the last 21 campaigns..... maybe even 20 of the last 21

[Durhamfootman]

Northants have signed Ashton Agar on a very short Dribble deal..... who will he play? Obviously

expect him to rock up and snatch figures of 4-0-12-4 before he ssipes off back home

[captaincolly]

Northants have signed Ashton Agar on a very short Dribble deal..... who will he play? Obviously

expect him to rock up and snatch figures of 4-0-12-4 before he ssipes off back home

Yep!

[Durhamfootman]

well.... we are still short of batters. The arrival of Ackermann only means that we now bat down to number 6, instead of the 5 we batted down to last year

Of course I forgot about how many nations are competing in the T20 WC. Ackermann, as was always my understanding, is not in the NL squad, but Corporal Jones is in the Scotland squad, so we still only bat down to 5.

Gawd help us if Jonesy's replacement is Borthwick :scared

Maybe we'll see McKinney this year. I was really surprised that he didn't play last year

[captaincolly]

well.... we are still short of batters. The arrival of Ackermann only means that we now bat down to number 6, instead of the 5 we batted down to last year

Of course I forgot about how many nations are competing in the T20 WC. Ackermann, as was always my understanding, is not in the NL squad, but Corporal Jones is in the Scotland squad, so we still only bat down to 5.

Gawd help us if Jonesy's replacement is Borthwick

Maybe we'll see McKinney this year. I was really surprised that he didn't play last year

Yes, in The Cricketer magazine it mentioned Ackermann had opted to stay with us. I think de Leede is in the WC squad.

[Durhamfootman]

he is, thank goodness. By and large he's done okay for us in the red ball stuff, but he's a complete liability in the hit and giggle

[captaincolly]

he is, thank goodness. By and large he's done okay for us in the red ball stuff, but he's a complete liability in the hit and giggle

Yes. An odd one really since his experience was almost entirely in white ball cricket yet he seems much better in the longer format.

[Durhamfootman]

home game of the season follows directly after the conclusion of the away trip to OT. 9 times out of 10 teams playing the second of back to back games will lose it, but that's pretty much a given for Durham anyway

I wonder if the chicken gyros van will be there on Friday?

(just to put attendance into perspective)

[Durhamfootman]

Of course all the counties and player unions and such like made representations to the ECB to stop the practice of back to back fixtures on the grounds of player safety, game integrity and supporter burn out, so it's nice to see that we only have back to back matches on 4 occasions this season