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.

So I suspect Hassan, Rae and OHD for Lancashire. Plus one of Briggs, Che or Lintott.
Assuming one of Bethell or Mousley is dropped.

Shame as that might have given a good indication as who’s in line to play the T20. I think there’s a couple of places up for grabs.

GerryShedd wrote:

Regarding the batting in the second innings against Essex, I reckon at least five were out to "why did he do that?" shots - Davies, Mousley, Burgess, Bethell and Simmons. Barnard was unlucky to be caught down the leg side and the rest were out to reasonable deliveries.
Harmer is in a class of his own as a spinner in UK domestic cricket but an ordinary spinner like Matt Critchley getting 4-24 is a bit of a joke.

I can’t fault Burgess for taking the sweep on. It was how he and Barnard dealt with the spinners in the first innings. County championship twitter literally posted a video about how Barnard used the sweep first innings after struggling early against Harmer.
You watch the other wickets to spinners, a lot of them were trying to play from the crease.
Right shot, but it bounced and turned more on the older pitch.
Mousley’s was identical to his first innings, was really poor. Davies was really head scratching, not sure what he was trying.

The question of the follow on is irrelevant if we bat well. The logic is sound in that sense.
Score 200-250 and we win.
But as Davies said we were 50-5 twice. That’s a joke.

On Benjamin, we’ve seen him come in off plenty of runs from the 2’s and not do well.
The issue is a lack of accountability. How can we have players in the top order who consistently don’t score runs unless it’s dead flat? Worse than that, we make arguably the worst offender for that captain. Which sets the tone.
How can you drop anyone, if that’s the standard the captain sets? Any batsman that gets dropped can rightly feel aggrieved because the rest of the top order are doing the same.
Mousley is still treated like a 17/18 year old kid fresh out the academy. He’s 23 in a couple of months and has played 25 FC matches never scoring a century and averages about 25. He’s got to be accountable for his performances.
Bethell similar though he is less experienced.
You look at that top order and it’s clear you’re missing a genuine batsman at 5, because Barnard should be number 6, Burgess 7, and if you’re picking them for their spin either Mousley or Bethell should be 8 because they aren’t batting well enough to have a place in the top order.
Ultimately it comes down to once again the squad not being strong enough, with too many resources spent on white ball.

Robinson does seem to prefer batters who offer something else.
You could argue Hain is the only one who doesn’t have some other skill, Barnard, Rhodes, Yates, Bethell and Mousley all bowl, Davies and Burgess keep wicket.
The problem being for Mousley for sure, the batting isn’t up to snuff at the moment. And if he’s batting 5 or 6 that can’t be the case.
As has been the way with this team over the past 2 or 3 years, our top and middle order can score when the going is good, but when the going gets tough, the only ones I have any faith in to score or be resilient are usually Hain, Barnard and Burgess.