2019 Domestic Season

I saw my first days cricket this year on Monday. Only the second days cricket on a non-work day at New Road this season, and on the last occasion the weather was awful so I decided to give it a miss. Mind you, it was still bloody cold on Monday!

I saw Middlesex bowled out for 220 having been asked to bat. The pitch was absolute dross and I felt that score was probably 20 runs above par. Worcester have a habit of producing pitches that are up and down from the off. One delivery from the Diglis End took off and a few balls later a similar deliver basically rolled along the floor. Worcester were then blown away by Tom Helm who was very impressive. Nice solid repeatable action, tall and decent pace. One to watch if he can stay fit.

Worcester’s batting is thin. Rhodes is not a number 3 and I don’t think Whitley is a number 6, nor a front line bowler. D’Olivera can’t buy a run and is out of the side and Fell hasn’t really found form after recovering from illness. A youngster called Josh Dell made 50 at 4 the round before so maybe he will play a few more games in the second half of the season. They have lost Twohig to injury too so they have no front line spinner. I was surprised they didn’t go in for Bess on loan and I would have thought that Somerset may have been receptive to loaning to a second division county rather than Yorkshire. I think mid-table looks the most likely outcome for Worcester this season.

Somerset have had a great start to the season and I was really pleased that they won the one day cup. They have a really exciting young squad with lots of strength in depth and competition for places. They must have a really good chance of doing the double this year. Glos have been competitive too which is nice.

I guess there won’t be a lot of love for the new franchise names on this forum. Anyone fancy going to Cardiff to watch the Welsh Fire which is the side Gloucestershire and Somerset are affiliated with? I am trying to remain open minded regarding the format but creating a franchise in Wales to accommodate the South West of England and the whole of Wales was always going to raise peoples hackles. Couldn’t they have compromised and had 10 sides with the South West one’s fixtures shared between Bristol and Taunton? Could have had a North East side too. They have 8 games at the moment. Making it 9 games with 4 home and 5 away or vice versa doesn’t seem too hard to accommodate. Ensure you have at least one game played at each smaller affiliated County each year (so the Birmingham franchise would play at least one game in Worcester and three in Birmingham) and reduce the number of list A games by moving to a knockout competition. Still sounds rubbish but at least a few less people would feel left out.

Regarding the 100, it’s hard to have much optimism for it but the ECB will no doubt make some up. The publicity surrounding it is poor, they’ve released the names of 6 teams but not the other two. Seems a bit piecemeal. Somerset supporters are just laughing about it at the moment and are worried about what cricket will be available to watch in July and August next year, if any.
I don’t really know the background but I don’t know why any county would support the next door county if their players aren’t playing for the nearest franchise. When the draft comes I would have thought that there will be more Somerset players wanted rather than Glamorgan’s. Will Somerset’s player have to play for the Welsh team or will it be an open draft? If it’s open then I would imagine we would support our players wherever they are playing, If fans decide to go at all to support which isn’t a given at the moment.
Jack, I’m not sure the ECB will worry about counties or fans feeling left out, they have always talked about a “new audience” which won’t include the likes of me. They are looking for families and children for the late afternoon / early evening
I would have thought a fair few of Somerset’s players will be involved in the competition which then begs the question who will be left to play for us in the main summer months.
Lots of questions but very few answers. Hey ho I should be used to this after years of supporting the gas!

This June weather is really messing up the Championship so far but out of it all Somerset managed to get a win v Kent in less than two days, less than 4 sessions. We’re still a batsman short imo but our bowlers are blowing away most of the opposition. And not even a sniff of a turning wicket for our spinner(s) yet at Taunton or anywhere. 26 points clear but a long, long way to go yet but we usually get stronger. Now we need to take each match at a time, keep our nerve and rotate our bowlers to keep them fit.

You obviously haven’t been watching Somerset as long as some of us! We really can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But the luck is certainly going our way with the weather, although to be fair to us in the most recent match we had less than 4 sessions and won the match, others had about the same time and didn’t.
But irish you are right about the Bess issue, no one at Taunton can understand why he’s gone on loan to Yorkshire. Still I think it’s only for a month, maximum of 4 matches, so I don’t think it will define our season. It was a strange one though.
And of course you are correct about keeping all our young players happy. It is a problem but perhaps not such a big problem when you’ve come up through the system, played in all the age groups. In our case the “we are Somerset “ mantra is very strong as you saw when Bess and Jamie O came back for the one day final.
But the problem will resolve itself this year. For the Kent match Marcus T was left out of the squad because of lack of form and Tom Banton played and top scored with 66 on a poor pitch, in what turned out to be a match-winning innings. It was a move we at Taunton had predicted a few matches ago. This will be Tres’s last season I think and he will not let his pride weaken the side. The fast bowlers situation isn’t a problem. Jamie and Craig have just signed long term contracts and they will not want to be anywhere else. We have 6 fast bowlers with Davey and Groenewald added to the 4 at Kent. They have been revolved all season so far with the exception of Craig who’s played all the matches. Jamie was injured at the start and he went to Northampton for one match to get practice. Lewis G signed a new lucrative, long term contract in September and he will play and captain in the T20. But I think that Tres being dropped means that no one is guaranteed a starting spot which is a strength of the squad. Banton and Bartlett are the two batting youngsters and I think they will play.
And I guess the Championship schedule with 4 matches in September may give Bess the chance to bowl at the key time of the season. And any player this year will want to stick around and become a legend by being in the team that finally gets our Holy Grail, the Championship. It will put all the one day wins of the glory years into perspective.
I guess time will tell but of all the players I think Dom Bess is the one who may need to move eventually to get the time to bowl consistently. The others will be in the Somerset team for a very long time.

Your analysis about our bowling attack irish is pretty bang on. Our bowlers are very good but it’s hard to see them replacing anyone in the England team. You may be right about Jack Leach later on in the Summer but it’s such a tight test squad with Moeen and Rashid likely to be the spinners that I think he will miss out again. And Jamie O is still, imo, the fastest and potentially best bowler we have but he is so vulnerable to injuries that I’m not sure he will go on and play for England. Somerset I think “manage” him very well and he knows it. One or two of the bowlers, possibly Davey, Brooks or even Craig O may be rested for the T20 but if fit I think Jamie will play as many as he can together with Jerome Taylor. Bess could go out on loan again, to a second division team I hope, but he will be kept back for the time when the Ashes start in case Jack L is called up. I’ve always felt we are a batsman short to be a Championship winning side but our bowlers are getting us out of a few holes so far this season.

You've done an excellent job of jinxing Somerset here Irish! It's been an odd season so far. All of the talk back in April was that the new batch of duke balls had a flatter seam and made batting easier. Then, after the white-ball hiatus it basically hasn't stopped raining (New Road flooded whilst I was on holiday) and batting has looked really difficult again.

The lack of runs has certainly made it difficult to pick a top 3 for the Ashes.

Was in Taunton for two days of the Hampshire match. Very professional comeback after losing to Essex. Good to see Somerset play both Bess and Leach who both bowled well and far better than Mason Crane for Hampshire. But Crane hasn’t had much cricket over the past year and what he needs is to bowl long spells. Yesterday he bowled in the morning and was very expensive and bowled poorly without any confidence but in the afternoon he bowled very well and got a couple of wickets. It’s a hard game but Leach and Bess are always encouraged by the senior pros. Yesterday Crane was largely ignored by the seniors and he needed, imo, an arm round his shoulder and some support.
Essex are on a roll and the last game of the season is Somerset v Essex at Taunton. I’m sure it won’t come down to it because there’s a long way to go before that but it’s an intriguing possibility.
Division Two is very close 50/60 points covering all 10 teams. Gloucestershire still in with a shout, like everyone else. Middlesex bottom! What a transformation since winning the Championship in ‘16.

Scarborough a ground ive not done and I should have done it in the last two years when Somerset played there and won. I like festival cricket, a bit of a wander back into olden days! Remember with fondness Bath and Weston. Usually good cricket which produced results even in the days of 3-day matches. That Surrey Yorkshire match also seemed a very good match with a bit of to and fro.
When they won the Championship in ‘16 I thought we might drop and Middlesex with their batting strength of Robson, Guppy, Eskinasi and Malan would dominate. Their bowlers, Finn, Roland-Jones have suffered very bad injuries but today 18 places between us is very sad, although a lot of Somerset fans wouldn’t think it after Angus Frasers accusations in that final match in ‘17! They’ll come again and with it being so close in Division 2 this season it’s not impossible that, with a good end of season run, it could even be this year. But unlikely I would think. Lancashire, keep their nerve, should be favourites to take one of the places to go up.

Poor week for Somerset with rampaging Essex taking over at the top.  I think the T20 break has come at a good time. You can reset the batteries and come again for the last burst of games.  As a (mainly) neutral I'm holding out for that Somerset-Essex last week deCIDER (see what I did there!) at Taunton.  If it happens I will be doing everything I can to get down there for it.