2015 Hampshire Thread

[st_brendy]

What a shame, Abbott is unavailable to play against us tomorrow night. He's been called back to SA to attend an awards ceremony! Stirling will also be missing for Middlesex, as he's playing for Ireland.

An awards ceremony?! Seems an odd reason to miss a game and make an essentially pointless journey to and from SA. The Middlesex faithful will not be impressed.

Oh it gets better. An awards ceremony followed by a SA kit photo shoot.

Murtagh is also away with Ireland, so he isn't available to replace Abbott.

[captaincolly]

What a shame, Abbott is unavailable to play against us tomorrow night. He's been called back to SA to attend an awards ceremony! Stirling will also be missing for Middlesex, as he's playing for Ireland.

An awards ceremony?! Seems an odd reason to miss a game and make an essentially pointless journey to and from SA. The Middlesex faithful will not be impressed.

Oh it gets better. An awards ceremony followed by a SA kit photo shoot.

Murtagh is also away with Ireland, so he isn't available to replace Abbott.

A photo shoot!
Hopefully a good T20 performance will boost Hampshire's confidence and lead to an upturn in Championship cricket. Hants must always be favourites in T20 given their fantastic record in the competition.

[budgetmeansbudget]

Thank goodness for the 66 off 4 overs.

[st_brendy]

Thank goodness for the 66 off 4 overs.

Shah and Ervine both threaten to do that on a regular basis. But usually end up holing out at some point. Fortunately it wasn't the case last night.

Looks like we're going to need to the same again here though. Gayle. Somerset. Taunton. A current run rate of 7.6 per over should be nowhere near enough.

[captaincolly]

Thank goodness for the 66 off 4 overs.

Shah and Ervine both threaten to do that on a regular basis. But usually end up holing out at some point. Fortunately it wasn't the case last night.

Looks like we're going to need to the same again here though. Gayle. Somerset. Taunton. A current run rate of 7.6 per over should be nowhere near enough.

Without wanting to tempt fate. Gayle must be due a failure!

[st_brendy]

Thank goodness for the 66 off 4 overs.

Shah and Ervine both threaten to do that on a regular basis. But usually end up holing out at some point. Fortunately it wasn't the case last night.

Looks like we're going to need to the same again here though. Gayle. Somerset. Taunton. A current run rate of 7.6 per over should be nowhere near enough.

Without wanting to tempt fate. Gayle must be due a failure!

Frustratingly only setting them 168 to win means that they can afford Gayle to have a failure.

We've batted first 5 out of 5 now. Take out the Glamorgan game (played on a slightly iffy wicket), our scores are 167, 172, 172 and 173. The last three all coming at home. We are scarily consistent.

[st_brendy]

Sounded like quite a painful innings at times from Vince. Timing regular seemed to be all over the place. And getting just seven 4s (and no 6s) from 53 balls - and at Taunton - is evidence of that.

Important little cameo from Ervine, but yes it surely wont be enough.

Not that I'm complaining mind. This is one game which I accept a defeat in. There was always the chance that we could have gone out here and smashed 210, and still lost.

[captaincolly]

Wonder what the average 1st innings score is at Taunton?

[st_brendy]

One wicket at the non-Gayle end. Nine more to take from that end.

[st_brendy]

Gayle dropped in the deep on 36. Denly dropped him on 40 last game and he made 151*.

[captaincolly]

Trego out after a quickfire 50. Gayle played a supporting role!

[st_brendy]

Will Smith 0-45 and dropped Gayle twice (including once off his own bowling). Our little t20 hero will have better days.

[captaincolly]

Will Smith 0-45 and dropped Gayle twice (including once off his own bowling). Our little t20 hero will have better days.

Probably jinxed Smith after we were praising his T20 bowling on the Durham thread!

[budgetmeansbudget]

I see we've batted first in every T20 game so far this season, and four out the five scores have been within six runs of each other.

Didn't we used to favour putting the opposition first and chasing down the total?

[st_brendy]

The Professional Cricketers' Association's twitter account has announced Andre Adams' retirement from cricket, and Andre himself has tweeted a photo of a pair of boots hung up on a coat peg. He's also not in tomorrow's squad, and hasn't featured in our last two D1 games either.

It was only a three month contract that he signed with us, but for whatever reason it looks like he's decided to call it a day one month earlier. Maybe after his few games with us, he realised that his body just couldn't do it any more.

Any way, Bird and Terry are both in the 13 man squad, along with Edwards. Brad Wheal misses out altogether. I wouldn't be totally surprised to see Bird and Edwards both come in, with Briggs missing out. We need wickets, and we need them quickly.