He just cannot bowl 6 serviceable deliveries consecutively. Always be a 4 ball, you see in 4day cricket captains can't really set fields for him.

He does bowl the odd jaffa where he gets one to lift or nip off the surface.

I feel a though that last over has put it beyond us. Miles, when you factor in that he also bowled 6 or 7 wides has had a bit of a mare. Imagine the effigy burning last season if Henry Brookes had bowled like that?!

Craig Miles bowling half trackers at the death to a lad who is demonstrably very good on the pull.

Essex have managed a really good total without doing anything too outrageous, just good sensible batting and proactive running.

I don't fancy us here I must say, but it's a great opportunity for someone to make a bit of a name for themselves.

I've mentioned it before but we have a couple of below par fielders in Benjamin and Booth.

Essex teams looks decent with some extremely promising youngsters in it with some older heads like Westley and Nick Browne. All 11 have come through the Essex pathway and academy I believe.

You'd like to think it could work that way but the T20 side looks fairly settled. Yates can maybe force his way in.

I've never known Amir Khan play 1st team cricket?

Sounds like we'll have Simmons, Kai Smith and Rushworth available at some point but yes we could do without more Hundred call ups.

Interesting squad

XI could be

Yates
Barnard
Rhodes
Shaikh
Burgess+
Benjamin
Wylie
Booth
Lintott
Miles
OHD

?

One Day Cup time, great comp, great format.

Any squad news yet?

It's definitely increased in size!

Yes I had a gander at this this morning, that illustration of the hotel etc has changed a bit from the one we saw last year.

Very much a huge (absolutely massive actually) hotel stuck onto a cricket ground whereas in the original it looked like a redeveloped stand with a hotel inside.

Excellent news

I don't want to read too much into this team selection but I'm a bit disappointed Simmons isn't getting more of a look in.

Think we released Haydon?

Paul Best?

Strong start by the Bears openers much to the annoyance of bearsfans.org.uk

Inside-edge wrote:

KingofSpain wrote:

Great effort to get close from 11/3. Hain, Bethell and Garton can hold their heads high.
We gave them 20 runs too many with poor bowling and fielding.
Miles is just not good enough and the Kiwi is bang average. Hopefully those two can be replaced by Gleeson and Hassan for the quarter final.
Northants are a useful side but we will face better teams in the knockout phase.

100% agree with this. Add Gleeson and Hassan and the bowling is then at the same strength as the batting, a more balanced side. Anyone can have a bad game but with a balanced side it doesn’t impact the game as much.

It's curious how the narrative has changed over time. After the first 4 or 5 games everyone had huge concerns over our batting and acknowledged that the strength of our bowling was winning us matches, now that seems to have flipped on its head over the past week.

BristolBear wrote:

Andy wrote:

So you acknowledge that we've not been reliant on just 1 or 2 players then?

You say it's rare for any side to be putting out their strongest XI at this point of the season, indeed, and we're still topping our group looking at another 1/4 final.

We've not done badly thus far.

The meltdowns on here after we lose are incredible sometimes.

Reliant on 1 or 2 with bat and ball. So 2 in each, 3 or 4 all together was what I was going for.
And perhaps it was an exaggeration but it’s not far wrong either. Far closer than ‘everyone is contributing’.

Maybe my standards are higher than yours. You might be happy with 3 years of quarter final losses. If so you’ve had a great 3 years.
But we’ve spent a significant amount of money on this T20 squad, recruited a lot of T20 only players. Recruited so heavily in favour of t20 to the point that’s it’s clearly damaged the championship side. So the frame of reference for success isn’t one match or getting through the group. This side was built and targeted at winning the entire thing. Probably more so than any other side.
And yet, the mistakes of years past are currently being replayed again.
Being outplayed man on man, anyone can live with. But currently they’re making selection and tactical decisions that are hurting this side.
All I want is to give themselves the best chance to win when they walk out on that field. And currently they’re not.
And as I said, I’m not looking at this through the lens of 1 match, or the group stage. I’m looking at this through the lens of success is winning the competition. The amount of resource and effort that’s gone into this team, at the detriment of other areas, making the final is the minimum now. And currently we’re heading straight for another repeat of years gone by.
Carried by key players. Obvious weaknesses for all to see. Those weaknesses aren’t addressed or even acknowledged, and then they get exposed when playing a top side.

So my apologies that my standards, or was it meltdown, are beyond belief. But the club set this direction of travel, they’ve made the decision that this is the priority at the detriment of the championship side, and so they should be held to that. It’s much bigger than 1 game.

I appreciate what you're saying about the recruitment and how the side has been built and I agree the way the club has prioritised this comp to the detriment of others has been almost crass but you're acting like we've lost our quarter final match already. It's about 6/7 weeks away.

So you acknowledge that we've not been reliant on just 1 or 2 players then?

You say it's rare for any side to be putting out their strongest XI at this point of the season, indeed, and we're still topping our group looking at another 1/4 final.

We've not done badly thus far.

The meltdowns on here after we lose are incredible sometimes.

BristolBear wrote:

Highveld wrote:

Excellent from Sam, and Jacob, again, hower the top 3 failed again, and too many runs were conceded .

Too many players are allowed to underperform every game with no consequences.

It’s the same in every format.
We reward mediocrity. We’ve gone so far beyond showing faith in players.
What are the standards?
This is the issue we’ve had in previous years. Heavily reliant on 1 or 2 players who carry the batting and bowling. But remain obviously weak in certain areas, and these aren’t addressed. Then we expect that to be ok when we play the very best teams.

Disagree with this to a point, we've got 3 batters in Hain, Bethell and Mousley (I'm glad we did keep faith with the latter two) who are giving us good runs in most games and with regards to the bowling our spinners, as a unit, get the job done almost every time.

Who, Benjamin aside perhaps, shouldn't be in the side? Keep in mind the likes of Miles and probably Foulkes wouldn't be in the side if others were fit. They are just injury fill ins.