st_brendy wrote:The smallest part of me did wonder at one stage if I'd made a mistake at refusing to attend this one.
Somewhat strangely, if we're now going to drop/rest players, it'll have to be the likes of Ervine and Adams who we turn to. We're already playing most of the kids!
captaincolly wrote:st_brendy wrote:The smallest part of me did wonder at one stage if I'd made a mistake at refusing to attend this one.
Somewhat strangely, if we're now going to drop/rest players, it'll have to be the likes of Ervine and Adams who we turn to. We're already playing most of the kids!
Different formats but I wonder how you were so good in the RL50 but struggling in T20?
Other way round for Durham but Tahir obviously a huge factor plus Colly returning to form.
st_brendy wrote:captaincolly wrote:st_brendy wrote:The smallest part of me did wonder at one stage if I'd made a mistake at refusing to attend this one.
Somewhat strangely, if we're now going to drop/rest players, it'll have to be the likes of Ervine and Adams who we turn to. We're already playing most of the kids!
Different formats but I wonder how you were so good in the RL50 but struggling in T20?
Other way round for Durham but Tahir obviously a huge factor plus Colly returning to form.
We got very, very lucky in the RL50 group stage. As was mentioned continuously, we had no middle order at all. Aside from a brilliant Berg knock down the order to somewhat steal a win away from Sussex, we relied entirely on our top four in that group stage. And even then, Rilee and Vince were very hit and miss. And we lost Amla half way through. Had we not won our penultimate game, we might not even have qualified, let alone won the group.
There were only three matches where we batted like a top one-day team: the final group game, the SF and the final. The latter two being greatly helped by Northeast returning from injury. But even in those three games, it was still down to the top order. Vince hit two 100s, Rilee hit one, and Northeast made two 50s.
Vince and Northeast are much, much better suited to 50 over, where they don't need to play the rash shot or try something fancy. And given the massive hit and miss nature of Rilee, we badly shot ourselves in the foot by signing another such player in Munro. We quickly realised our mistake so attempted to rectify it by splitting them up and dropping Rilee down from opener to no.4 - which is an awful place to bat someone who is hit and miss, because if you do lose two or three early wickets then you're facing a very high probability of him then adding to that.
On balance though, I'd still say that the middle order is a bigger issue than the top order. As much as you don't want to lose early wickets, you can still recover if you have good batting depth. Twice Dawson has done just that for us. But Alsop, McManus and Weatherley have hardly scored a run between them (same for Taylor in the Rl50), and we play too many bowlers who can't bat. In the past, our middle order would be Ervine, McKenzie and a solid overseas player (Bailey, Katich, Christian, McLaren). And moreover, that would be off the back of a more reliable top order featuring Carberry and Adams.
Durhamfootman wrote:you'll have to get the ball-biter back next year
st_brendy wrote:Dawson's highest score of the Championship season. Down at no.8.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest