2019 Domestic Season

Norwell hasn’t played much over the last couple of years so I am not sure he will be that big a miss. Craig Miles on the other hand is a frustrating one. He was a bit hit and miss last year as you’d expect from a player still learning his trade. My guess would be that he is on the cusp of discovering some consistency though. When a county loses a player like Gidman or Kirby after seasons of consistent performances you kind of think that’s far enough but it is frustrating when you lose a youngster who isn’t likely to develop into anything other than a good County pro before he has really produced consistently over a period of time. The batting looks inexperienced but not completely lacking in talent. You could live with a few years of inconsistency if there was any prospect of the likes of Bracey sticking around should they develop into a good player. So yes, in short, I would think bottom 3 in the Championship is certainly on the cards this year.

You have to say, the strategy of Gloucestershire, Glamorgan and Durham to invest in their facilities in the hope of hosting international cricket has left all three Counties in a pretty desperate state. All the more so for Glos and Durham who have both missed out on hosting a side in the new competition next year. At least Durham had a few golden years before it all went wrong! Gloucester have been dreadful since the redevelopment was first proposed. Perhaps the strategy has paid off for Hampshire, all be it they have a very rich Chairman bankrolling the County.

There must be 20 batsmen who could conceivably find themselves in the England top 3 for the First Ashes test. At this stage I think the Burns and Roy are likely to feature but so much depends on who does what in the next couple of months. As always, the problem is that some of the better options (including but not limited to Clarke, Pope and Foakes) are better suited to 4 or lower.

The combined East Midlands XI aka Notts have a disappointingly strong squad. I heard an interesting interview with Ben Duckett last week. He basically said that after he toured with the Test side Graham Thorpe suggested that he might like to try developing a trigger, which, quite naturally, he did. The consequence was that he pretty much failed to score a run last year. As batsmen often seem to do he has gone back to his original technique which basically sees him stand still and try and hit the ball. I suspect the upshot is that he will score plenty of runs for Notts but maybe might find his technique against spin stops him having a successful international career.

Given the stuff that was doing the rounds about Joe Clarke during the Alex Hepburn trial I wonder whether moving away from Worcester might not be a bad thing for his development. I also wonder whether England might consider that he has too much baggage to make the side this summer. The pitches at New Road are pretty results orientated; I think they are better at Trent Bridge so that may work in Clarke’s favour. Notts also have a plethora of seem bowlers (Luke Wood would make a decent reserve at almost all other Counties but he is nowhere near their squad and has gone on loan to Northants). It would be nice if they could develop some of their own players – but there we go.

So I think Surrey or Notts will win the league. Surrey might just nick it as I think they have a better spin bowling attack. Kent will go down (although I backed them to get promoted for 3 years – until last year when I think I gave up hope and of course, they were promoted) but I think Yorkshire will struggle too. Not enough depth in the bowling department and a batting unit that has struggled for consistency over the last couple of years. Warwickshire need a couple of their (mainly pilfered) young batsmen to step up too. Sam Hain is a top order batsman who I thought would play for England but he seems to have kicked on in List A cricket and stalled in the red ball stuff.

I like Somerset’s bowling depth and Azhar Ali looks like a good signing but I always feel that Somerset have the odd low score in them.

Middlesex and Lancashire should get promoted but that’s often not how it works. A side gets on a role early on and then before you know if half the season has gone. The fixture list is a bit different this year though so maybe that won’t be the case this year. I know Northants have lost players but Wood and Holder are good early season signings and they could do well if they can score enough runs.

I have seen plenty of Worcester over the last couple of years. I have to confess, unlike Irish, I have definitely got an affinity with my adopted home County. New Road is a lovely place to spend a day and the proliferation of home grown players makes it really fascinating to see their development season on season. I promise I won’t go on too much (because I appreciate there can only be very limited interest in a non – west country County on a Bristol Rovers forum!) but Worcester have a really exciting bowling attack. Leach is really underrated but has a fabulous record over the last few years and Tongue will probably be the next Worcester cricketer to move to Notts or Warwickshire. Both missed large parts of last season but I expect them to make an impact this year. Pennington, Barnard and Brown are also a year older (Barnard is already pretty close to the finished article with both bat and ball and Pennington is probably the most promising of the lot, although his body language is a bit flat at times). Parnell looks like an astute signing to me. Much better than Magoffin anyway who was past his best and didn’t really have the pace to compliment Leach and Barnard who are certain starters.

They will miss Joe Clarke but signings Callum Ferguson and Wessels could go some way to replacing his runs (although I am not sure whether Ferguson is playing First Class cricket). They will need the likes of Fell, Cox and D’Oliveira to score more runs than they managed last season if they are going to get promoted and if spin does play a larger part this year due to the schedule they will need Twohig to step up too. It will also be interesting to see how Alex Gidman gets on as head coach.

I know Sussex have been heavily backed but I don’t think they will see much of Archer this year. They look better suited to List A cricket to me.

As a footnote – it’s been a good mornings cricket at Taunton. Gregory in the wickets again. He's another cricketer I rate really highly. Both he and Brooks are great county pros and ideally for Somerset, both are just a notch below international quality and so are omnipresent. 

Well you were right jack about Somerset having a low score in them, they always have done. Watched the last two days in Taunton and whilst you could criticise the batting it really was a compelling two days where the balance of the game swung backwards and forwards. And a good crowd in today esp for the last day of the match. Yesterday morning Kent only needed to bat sensibly to get a good first innings lead but Somerset bowled well to contain them to a 40 run lead and when we batted we were very poor and had lost 4 wickets before we were in the plus runs area. Match well and truly lost and losing 3 more wickets meant we were effectively 70-7. But our last three wickets wagged and a last wicket stand of 60 meant that Kent were chasing over 200. We were on a roll and Kent never recovered from losing a wicket first ball and being 1-2. We won’t win the championship but we can turn seemingly hopeless situations into a win and our attack is as good as any. We turned a losing situation into a win and Nottinghamshire couldn’t (though we didn’t have a batsman like Root to get out) do that when they should have done esp on the Trent Bridge wicket. Next match we go there so could be interesting.

I can’t see too far beyond Surrey to be champions but a great start for Hampshire who, apparently, got their first haul of 5 batting points since 2016, quite a telling stat. If James Vince and Sam Northeast have good starts and Abbott and Fidel Edwards can produce the goods they can be a very good team though I don’t think they have Surrey’s depth if test match calls occur. Kent will be disappointed to have been in a winning position yet lose by a relatively large margin and it may come back to haunt them. I was wrong earlier when I said Milnes was at the IPL, he played in this match. I should have said Joe Denley and tbh they needed him today when it started to go wrong. Stevens did well but a Joe Denley type character would have helped them steady the match when 44-5.

What will be good to see is the test match players playing in the early Championship matches. It will help the competition and keep the players in form or at least playing. And the fact that Broad was bowling seriously enough to hit Joe Root on his helmet today can only be a good sign of intent to bowl and bat well and take the competition seriously.

Gloucestershire did well to get 350 with the runs shared around. Good to see Roderick get runs and Higgins is a genuine all rounder. Don’t know the ins and out of the squad but if they can keep posting 300+ in division 2 they’ll win more than they lose. And it would be good to see them put in a genuine challenge but they do look more suited to one day success. But if they had injured bowlers against Derbyshire then they did ok. With it being such a long season they will need a big and fit squad but with the season cut into championship and one day chunks they may just need to manage their players’ fitness.

Well you got your answer there! Great performance from Gloucestershire, to beat a team like Surrey with all their one day stars. Looks like Chris Liddle had a good day. Now they’ve got to keep it up.

Well, yesterday was absolutely hilarious.

It shows that Tim Groenewald can produce more pies in Bristol than Pie Minister.

Good win for Shire up at Durham, onto Lancashire at Cheltenham on Monday. Anyone going?

Well, I will say it. Well done Somerset well-deserved one day champions. From ball one it was never in doubt. But what a complete cock up from the ECB and probably Hampshire themselves. How on earth do the ECB or whoever timetable an England friendly at the home ground of one of the finalists and include two of the players who should be at Lords? Shows total disrespect to the competition, the fans, Hampshire CCC, the sponsors and anyone else you want to include. Hampshire should have known in World Cup year that they were vulnerable to losing Vince, Dawson and even Crane but it appeared they had no back up plans for the loss of two of them. Don’t they have a second xi ? Berg always does well against us but usually at No. 8 or No. 9 never at No. 6. They went with an extra, or even two, bowlers and then won the toss and decided to bat. Why have Markham and Rehane as their overseas players and know that whatever they would not be able to play in a final? Madness. I bet the Hampshire fans, those who were there, were livid. I think most of them must have realised and went to the Rise Bowl instead. There were few at Lords. They were never in it.
But in the end I don’t care. Our home grown players, all 8 of them, stepped up to the mark and fully deserved to win. It’s always interesting seeing teams with very different team building policies in a final competing. After all our second positions, 10 apparently since we last won anything, it was good to get over the line at last.
Now can we keep our nerve and hold onto top spot in the Championship? That would be something special.