The one bright spot from the late rally is Somerset now have to bat at 1030 so hopefully gives our openers a bit of respite!

Somerset have been let off the hook here. 216/9. Wicket seems fairly flat now and the ball isn't doing much, but the ball is 65 overs old.

Poor stuff from Siraj this morning despite getting his 5th wicket early.

He is spraying it all over the place rather than bowling wicket to wicket (Brookes has done this and just cleaned them up as I type)

Somerset have gained a good 40/50 runs more than they should have plus a batting point.

Hopefully we can build an innings now.

The selection of Yates is looking totally justified, his average for the championship is now 11.7 and excluding his one decent innings, is just 7.81

With Davies and Yates in the side it effectively means we start each game two batsmen short.

Already 2/1. Yates out for a duck. This isn't going well after yesterday's dominant position when Somerset were 82/7.

Yates and Davies again.....no surprise, relegation beckons.

As I said, going into the game two batsmen short.

Meanwhile Matt Lamb with an average of 48.70 is sat at home.

It was great that we strengthened our bowling attack but, sadly, when you still have the usual suspects who have failed all season in the batting line up, the bowling is fairly irrelevant.

What was Davies doing??? Trying a drive outside the off stump?
Not great from Yates but at least it wasn’t a big drive.

They need to bat to lunch. Take the shine off. Let the pitch dry out some more, and batting should get easier.

Got to say my first reaction to this was simply to laugh at how quickly it came to be. To be serious though, there seems a huge confidence issue here. It was frustrating that Somerset were let back into the game but no catastrophe. Yet we opened the batting in clearly a position of mental weakness. 200+ can seem a long way off when you're batting to survive.

Highveld wrote:

The selection of Yates is looking totally justified, his average for the championship is now 11.7 and excluding his one decent innings, is just 7.81

With Davies and Yates in the side it effectively means we start each game two batsmen short.

23/3 and going absolutely nowhere

Yes, this team is unrecognisable from 12 months ago. Serious questions need to be asked of the management and selection of players. Davies is hopeless and has been most of the season. Why is Matt Lamb not playing given his respectable average this year? A shambles...

Interestingly in this game, there appears to be a test going on with ball tracking in county cricket.

On the link below there’s a video package of balls being tracked for a test.
https://live.nvplay.com/ecb/#md18d8240-61bf-4201-a345-ee070f634b62
Very timely considering Lancashires statement today about the standard of umpiring currently.

In most games the players make very significantly more mistakes than the umpires.

And they usually pay for it but when you see decisions like the one Hain got at The Oval then you wonder about umpires who stick their finger up very quickly instead of taking a moment to have a think.

Reminds me of the siuation you see in club cricket
Howzat Dad?

Thats out son :-)

One thing I will say about umpires, and something Chilton got correct, is that there is no accountability. They have a poor match like Taylor at Surrey, and he’s still doing it next week, no issues.
At least players can get dropped.
The other thing is, a player can’t influence an umpires career. A couple of bad decisions and umpires can have a potentially huge effect on a players career.

Rhodes didn't look too happy being given out caught behind

Players do not generally act like Rhodes did unless the decision is poor.

Umpires can and do get dropped from the first class panel, also if they have poor gradings they won't be given high profile D1 and one day games.

So there are consequences for umpires.

Yates and Davies seem to be totally imune from the consequences of playing badly!