captaincolly wrote:SaintPowelly wrote:If everyone in your XI (based on this lineup) scores their average, you’d score 278.
I’m not sure what to make of that.
Might be that individually most of them have promise but collectively the line-up is too flimsy because the balance between experience and inexperience is wrong.
Having a look at the batting in the last shambolic effort and I think the positives (+) and negatives (-) are:
Lees += obvious talent as demonstrated in the RL50 matches and pretty experienced -= had a disastrous couple of seasons at the end of his Yorkshire career so, despite his ability, no recent record of run scoring in 4 day cricket.
Pringle + = I'm not sure! - = he's got a poor record batting in the middle order so opening the batting seems a bad idea ( although to be fair he played a few shots in the second innings but that swashbuckling approach won't work unless you're someone like Warner)
Bancroft += a world class batsman and I'll be very surprised if he doesn't score a lot of runs - = under constant pressure in thus lineup and , batting at 3 , will almost always be in straight away so why not open?
Harte += very promising start to his career and he looks capable of establishing himself as a fine player. - = still inexperienced and is unlikely to have the luxury of coming in to bat with a decent score on the board so that'll make it harder for him to establish himself as a fine player. If he'd been batting at 4 with the deadly duo Rocky & Borthwick in the top 3 he'd have a much better chance.
Burnham += another very gifted player who has made a promising start this year. -= same as Harte but with the added pressure of coming back after the ban!
Trevaskis += looks useful so reasons for optimism -= a rookie in a lineup with only one top class batsman so he'll be batting under pressure more often than not.
Eckersley += pretty good record and a lot of experience, certainly a better bet than Poynter. -= the record is pretty good but not great so when he comes in to bat with the side in trouble he won't work miracles.
Raine += he's already shown he can make 30's and 40's down the order. -= through no fault of his own those 30's and 40's are unlikely to be game changers because we'll probably only have about 100 on the board when he comes in to bat with the tailenders!
So I think that lineup is less than the sum of its parts. Bancroft is the only one I expect to do well, most of the others would probably be fine if individually they were part of a stronger lineup but having them all in this one won't work imo.
Cameron Steel maybe should be in but he's another one with more potential than experience so would have the same problems. I'd have Smith in for his experience but he's rarely been a prolific run scorer and is probably in his last season.
Richardson has experience but not the sort of record in 4 day cricket that'd inspire confidence. And Poynter is hopeless.
The only hope is ,as DFM has said , we've only been about 100 runs short in each match so it won't take a miraculous improvement to start winning. If we'd not had the disastrous run out of the great leader yesterday I think there'd have been a very good chance he'd have scored enough runs to make us favourites to win.