Man for man we’re definitely stronger.
But De Lange is a top bowler when on form.
They’ve also got a couple of very dangerous batsmen who can score heavily.

If we play our best team, and if our players play to their ability, I’d be confident of beating Gloucs.

Should be a good atmosphere too, Bristol isn’t far down the M5, the top of Gloucestershire is no more than an hour away. So expect they’ll bring some fans.

He definitely opened for Worcestershire.
I remember him hitting a tonne in a quarter final against Sussex I think it was.

This is the Moeen we thought we were getting. Where’s he been all this time?

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.

Andy wrote:

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.

Benjamin, Davies, Yates and Moeen haven’t been good enough with the bat.
You can say Foulkes and Miles wouldn’t be playing. But we chose to sign Foulkes over playing Booth or OHD. And Miles has played plenty of this format in the last few years. Plus everyone has injuries. Rare for any side these days to put out their first choice XI every match.
Garton is underperforming, especially when you consider this is the only format he plays for us.
Briggs and Lintott have been good. Gleeson was good before injury (another 1 format wonder). Mousley has been good with the ball too.
So you walk out each match, trusting only half the team. That works fine in the group stages as we’ve seen plenty of times before. Because more than half the games we play are against weaker teams, who have even less reliable players than we do.
But against the top teams in the QF, you need the depth because you need more than 1 or 2 players to come off in each discipline.

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.

Watching Benjamin play makes me angry. What is Robinson trying to prove?
He’s so out of form, batting poorly, keeping worse and yet apparently undroppable.

Another poor last over, this time by Foulkes. Got lucky at the end that he was only bowling against a tailender, those last 2 would have gone for miles against anyone else.

I do hope by the QF’s that Davies can keep, because apart from being poor so far with the bat, Benjamin (somehow) is even worse with the gloves.

Think the playing in the group stages only applies to overseas.

The averages make awkward reading for Davies. But could be worse, he could be Chris Benjamin. 11…. At the lowest strike rate of anyone. And not dropped. Mind boggling.

Do we know how bad the Davies injury is?
We know Benjamin is batting poorly but I’d be terrified having to rely on him with the gloves. He’s a very average keeper, he spilled a catch in this match after taking the gloves from Davies.

Reabank wrote:

Some of the criticism is over the top. We have three batters with 2024 cc averages of over 50 (Davis, Burgess and Yates), Barnard averaging 47 and Rhodes 41. Jacob Bethell is emerging as a strong all formats player - Dan Mousley has struggled in the championship but these things happen. And we have a decent crop of batsmen and a spin bowler at U19 level. It's disappointing that in the two games we lost we got into positions to win but I think Davis and Robinson are fine as a captain and coach combination.
Having said that I don't think it's a surprise that we've come up short on the pace bowling as we always looked thin . We haven't had a decent spinner since Jeetan Patel left - in recent seasons no spinner hasn't really mattered but with generally good batting pitches (too good in some cases) spin is more relevant this season. We don't produce good bowlers and don't seem to be prepared to recruit good championship bowlers or at least not enough of them. I also agree that the approach of bringing in emergency overseas players hasn't worked.

We should expect so much more of our county’s coach and captain than “fine”.

Winning is built on performances, performances are built on culture, work ethic, tactics and talent.
You can’t fault their work ethic.
But they’re short in talent compared to the best county sides, Davies & Yates averages have been heading downwards after those ludicrous kookaburra rounds.

The culture is appalling, playing favourites, rewarding failure, clear favouritism to 1 format. And the tactics are poor too, very evidently based on this year. Both in terms of on field decisions, field settings, and off field recruitment and squad management.

I’ve got to assume Benjamin is only in the squad til Moeen is back.
If he plays again it’s truly laughable.
Burgess must be wondering what he’s got to do.

It’s as we’ve said multiple times. Injuries are only unlucky if your squad is built properly.
But if you build a bowling attack around 2 men in their late 30’s coming to the end of their careers, arguably the most injury prone player in the clubs history, Miles is hardly a fitness guarantee, an unproven rookie 22 year old overseas, and an England player who barely plays except to find fitness and form, and our bowling recruits are all white ball only. It’s hard to act surprised when we get injuries and perform poorly because the cupboard is bare.

I look at this squad and I think Barnard, Burgess, Hain and Hannon-Dalby are reliable top quality players.
Too many others are inconsistent, unreliable, too injury prone, unproven, or just not good enough at all.

They clearly had a plan to declare overnight, problem is Hain batted for his average, there was no intent, no cohesive plan, everyone played differently.
So we ended up 60-70 runs light, and they declared anyway.
On a flat, slow pitch, with 3 front line bowlers, surely they’re smart enough to know they need to commit to early to the draw if Somerset look in a good position. But they didn’t. They spent so long pretending they could win, they let themselves lose.

Just a season of sleepwalking. No coherent tactics, awful decision making, weak inept coach, poor tactician as a captain, squad built on injury prone bowlers.

There’s 4 players in the championship who all things considered, can be relied on to deliver, Hain, Burgess, Barnard and OHD. That’s a joke.

If we lose this, it can all be put down to that bizarre hour or 2 when Hain came in, forcing the rate to a near stop. Then Mousley and Barnard feeling like they needed to force the issue and getting out. Making Hain hit the breaks once more.
If he and Rhodes had batted normally for those 15 overs around tea, got at 3 or 4 an over with little risk, the target would have been 470-480.

I agree with going for the win.
Problem is, at every stage this championship season, Davies and Robinson have always made the conservative choice.
And whilst Worcs won, Notts lost, with very low bonus points. If we get a draw, we’d get 15 points. Would stay more than a draw above Worcs, move above Notts. And Robinson will say, a win changes very little, a loss has a huge impact.

I bet we bat on tomorrow. Maybe 10-15 more overs.
104 overs in the day. Think it’s 2 lost for change of innings. 10 overs batting tomorrow gives you a chance of 10 overs with the second new ball, plus makes the run rate that little bit higher.
Robinson and Davies are nothing if not conservative when it comes to these things.

Hain just seems to have no interest in scoring at anything close to a normal rate. More interested in his average.

He and Bethell have scored 52 in this partnership, Bethell is on 35.

Not at all sure what Hain is is playing at. At least Rhodes has shown some intent, Sam has shown none at all.

The draw was always odds on favourite the moment Somerset passed the follow-on target. But can’t understand the tactics here.

Seems fairly obvious why his move to Sussex collapsed.

Just read the official ruling document, tell you what, it’s brutally tough.
Full, very detailed investigation by 2 independent experts proves it was by accident, punished essentially for trusting the ingredients on the bottle, not going on the companies website where they have a separate and different disclaimer, but the same ingredients listed. And that he didn’t ask the club doctors.