What about if you look at his averages and then look at them again without his top score!?

There was no vendetta against him, he simply did not perform for two season but was given more chances than others.

He had some great debuts though!

"As Albert Einstein said "To keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, is madness"."

A bit like a certain poster wanting to drop Yates and Davies for the past three seasons.

A fairly disastrous morning session! It would be quite an achievement to battle back from here.

Sam has certainly had a tough season, which makes the number of batting points so surprising! I don’t know what Franchise stuff he will be doing over the winter but I hope he comes back to us happy and healthy!

I don’t like to comment on unsubstantiated reports of dressing room disharmony but there does seem to be something up at the moment.

Essex have a terrific bowling unit who are able to exploit these sorts of conditions. I’d have Porter and Cook in a heartbeat!

Tough conditions to bat on and high quality bowling….its hard to be too critical.

Do the players just want the season to be over as well?

Wow, that escalated quickly!

I’ve really not enjoyed this season, we’ve been bad before but there is something about this year which is really grating and I’m not sure what it is.

Complacency? Self entitlement? Obvious shortcomings not being addressed?

I’ve just been left feeling detached and lacking any enthusiasm, even when we were winning matches in the T20 I didn’t seriously think we would progress as I simply didn’t think we were good enough.

And now we are struggling against our neighbours who lost several key players last year, have also had lots of injuries and are fielding players we deemed not good enough to play for us.

Demoralising.

Good rational points Andy, I agree with pretty much all of what you say.

I’m not sure about the length of the contracts for those you propose releasing though, if they are multi year deals then it would be expensive to jettison them all.

They won’t resign, why would they? They will be determined to stay and do better. Any decision will need to be taken by the director of cricket, that is what he is paid to do.

If we had scraped through I wouldn’t have fancied our chances against any of the others at Finals day to be honest though, especially with Bethall and Mousley unavailable!

The squad is ok but lacks the match winners other counties seem to have. We’ve said all season that the batting unit is light of a power hitter and so it proved again.

Very disappointing

I’m not one to call for people to be sacked but there has to be changes after this season. Recruitment has been poor, tactics questionable and mentality ill equipped to cope with the pressure of knock out matches.

Painful to watch.

Not Benjamin’s fault tonight, just a poor batting display from a poor batting unit.

Just not good enough.

Don’t worry, Benjamin to the rescue I’m sure….

Pretty poor so far. A typical Ali innings since he came back, plays a few nice shots to get into double figures and then out.

As Private Fraser would say ‘I never doubted them for a single minute’.

Maybe we do have that winning mentality after all? A great innings, I only wish I could have been there!

That’s Game over then, lots of mitigating factors to be in this position today but hard to disagree with lacking that winning mentality.

Poor chap, such a shame his body wasn’t able to cope with the demands of professional sports. When he was fit he was such a key performer.

I wish him well for whatever his future plans are.

But those in power tell us the 16.4 is more interesting to watch…..

A championship win as a captain is not to be sniffed at. As a player I felt he was a decent enough county player however I don’t think he quite kicked on in the way we had hoped when he signed. Formed a good partnership with Sibley when in Div 2 but often struggled at the start of a season before getting into the grove by September.

Will be missed but not irreplaceable. Having said that I don’t have much faith in our recruitment department at the moment so who knows who will come in.

Good luck to him, I’ll watch out for his stats in the seasons to come.