I do sound fixated now but I watched burgess against Worcester with Lamb a couple of years ago smoke it. And against Surrey and Gloucestershire last year for Sussex. Then Barnard in the 50 over smashed it. Give them a chance.
Use the squad.

ExiledBrummie wrote:

Andy wrote:

Has there been any moments this Blast campaign, or the last, where Alex Davies inferior keeping has cost us?

And I ask this as a massive Michael Burgess fan.

Not at all, it's just a certain posters current obsession. Do think Burgess should be strongly considered as a batsman though.

It’s got nothing to do with Davies keeping though.
If you’re picking Burgess as batsman, why not have him keep? He’s a better keeper and it means it’s easier for Davies to captain the side. If it’s a pride thing for Davies then let him keep.

By far the bigger issue is the endless chances certain players get.
I bet Benjamin and Mousley get runs today and it’ll be used to justify their selection. But 1 or 2 knocks out of 19 matches isn’t good enough.

Problem is Mousley’s spin option is going round the park.
Judged on his batting alone it’s not good enough. Yates and Bethell offer spin options too if needed after Briggs and Lintott. So his bowling shouldn’t come into it.
Plus Barnard offers bowling.
I’d swap out Mousley and Benjamin for Barnard and Burgess.
If it’s only one of them, I’d pick Burgess as he’s got runs in the 2’s plus outperformed many of our batters last year on loan at Sussex.
And I do think Burgess should have the gloves for the simple reason, it’s easier to captain and put plans across and talk with bowlers from mid off or the covers than behind the stumps. Plus why not have your best keeper keeping?

Came down to 2 really poor overs with the ball. And then Benjamin and Mousley chewing up 25 balls between them for 26 runs.

But we know this is an issue from the last couple of years. If the bowling doesn’t perform almost perfectly. The batting is carrying too many players to score. But Robinson refuses to acknowledge it.

The players we know haven’t been performing once again aren’t performing. Benjamin wasted half the Powerplay, 14 balls faced for 15 runs. Mousley 11 off 11 and went round the park when bowling.
Going to be all on Hain.

If not then definitely time to let him go.

Keep him for the championship. With Ali, Gleeson, Garton, Miles, OHD, Aamir, Booth, Barnard, Simmons, Briggs, Mousley & Lintott. We’ve surely got enough bowling for the T20.

Wonder what pictures Benjamin has of Robinson.

GerryShedd wrote:

Barnard four overs for 67 runs and out for 0 - not exactly making a case for promotion to the full Bears team.
Burgess on the other hand 46 off 19 balls….
Both Barnard and Benjamin failed. Unless they come good in the second match, hard not to think he’s in with a shout.

Not sure the batters stood a chance when they posted 190.
A lot of poor bowling.
And then Somerset had a very strong bowling line up, against which we were swinging from the off.

Whatever happened to all the extras for the T20’s? They had Becky Wood, Aatif Nawaz, the BBC WM commentators, usually an ex or current player as well.
Seemed much slicker and well produced both inside the stadium and on the stream.

Exiled Bear wrote:

To be fair, you say "the last couple of failures" but didn't we win the group in both of the last two seasons? I know we then lost in the quarter finals but it's still not a bad record, and we can't have won all those games with only one or two players scoring runs (especially given the number of times we racked up 200 or more)

Presumably Moeen should be back soon, and that will strengthen the batting.

Moeen is at the T20 World Cup. He’s not back for a while. If England let him play once he’s back at all.
Winning the group and choking in the quarter finals is a failure when you consider the resources piled into T20 cricket.
And if you look at the scores cards, yeah other batsmen got a score or 2 here and there. But as I said, it’s the huge lack of consistency. It’s when they scored their runs too, flat tracks against weaker attacks, or when others have scored already, very few match defining innings.

At the end of the day, the expectations are set by the club, they’ve very overtly targeted T20 for 2 if not 3 years in their recruitment. They’ve talked about winning, but not gotten to finals day. Apart from Surrey, I can’t think of any other side who’s T20 squad costs more than ours, when you consider the names, how many are seemingly white ball only now, the last 2 years have arguably been underperforming. And it’s noticeably negatively effecting the championship side now too.

Hold on this is a long one; but hope it explains where a lot of us are coming from.
This is all about perspective though, let’s be honest, everything is targeted at this competition, this is the priority. Yes they’ve won the two games. Both because of the bowling. The batting was average, no better, no worse.

The problem is, as we’ve found out the previous 2 years, you need to be strong in both aspects, and 3-5 players performing consistently in each. Last year Yates and Hain carried the batting, no one else was consistent, and it’s looking the same again. And that doesn’t work come knock out time against the best teams.
And considering the amount of money poured into this t20 team, at the expense of the championship side, it’s not unreasonable to have high expectations.

I think the other issue is, we’ve seen Robinson have a reluctance to change players despite a lack of performance, and use 1 decent performance after 6 poor ones justify that decision, and that lack of consistency doesn’t work in one off knock outs. We have a lack of consistency, with players like Benjamin and Bethell being passengers for a season now.
This is all made worse if the likes of Gleeson, Garton or Ali is hurt long term. As that was the entire off season recruitment, and it hurts the genuine strength of the side, wondering whether changes need to be made based on that is perfectly valid.
It’s about building a side to win the entire competition not the group. And going in with the same batting lineup that failed last year and expecting something different is just odd, especially when we’ve seen how good Barnard has been since mid way through last year; and that Burgess went on loan and outperformed almost all our batters. Every other side rotates, uses players in form, Robinson just doesn’t, it’s a locked door, just because we drop a player doesn’t mean they can’t come back in, but why not especially early on see who’s performing?
Winning now doesn’t equal winning later; and actually the way we’re going about this year seems very similar to the last couple of failures, which is why there’s the concern that we’re just repeating ourselves for a third time, which is even more egregious with how much we’ve targeted this competition.

The bowling is just superb. But if the batting doesn’t improve it’ll be the same story as last year.
Benjamins performances seem to have gotten worse each season. Think he was unknown his first year, now there’s plenty of video and people know how to bowl at him. He can’t rotate the strike. It’s boundaries or nothing. Unfortunately unless something changes, it seems second team might be his level.
As good as his fielding is, think Bethell is a bit of a passenger too, doesn’t bowl like Mousley in this format.
The batting is way too fragile. I’d bring Burgess and Barnard in for Bethell and Benjamin. Get a top quality keeper and another bowling option.
Barnard has gone from strength to strength since last season, and Burgess outperformed almost all our batters but Hain and Yates whilst he was on loan at Sussex (in a group that turned out to be much stronger last year).

Yates annd Bethell always seem to bowl better when there’s a specialist spinner in the side though.
When they’re the focal point, they don’t seem to produce as much.
Might be more due to the attitude batters take to them, knowing if they hit them out the attack it has a major effect on the team. Whereas it has a lot less benefit if they’re a bonus, and as such the risk isn’t worth it. Which allows them to get into the groove.

I suspect when the championship restarts after the first block of T20, unless he gets a decent score in the second innings Mousley will be “rested”.

It’s clearly a tough deck to bat on, there’s plenty in it for the bowlers. Makes Davies knock even better, nice to see him finally get some difficult runs.

Devon_Bear wrote:

Problem for Davies now does he carry on digging in or does he try to score more quickly?

My question would be why did we choose to bat on a pitch and in conditions that require us to dig in?
I’d be a lot more understanding if we’d been put in.

Problem is this glacial scoring rate causes problems of its own.
I’m glad the batters are playing responsibly, but it can’t be either throw your wicket away or go at 2 runs an over all innings.
You have to be able to score whilst batting properly.
You lose a couple of quick ones and how long you’ve batted is irrelevant, because the score hasn’t gone anywhere.

Going in with 8 batsmen and not enough specialist bowlers and relying on all rounders was never a good idea. Hopefully the team will be more balanced for this match.

Annoying that Hain can’t play due to the concussion rules, but safety first when it comes to things like that.
Finally got enough seam bowlers, with Miles and Hassan back.