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paulbear

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We are hoping that Durham beat Leicestershire and we beat Somerset. The group winners automatically go into the semi-finals (That should be the case in the T20 also) and the 2nd and 3rd qualify. So we must hope that Durham do better than today. They have lost a few players and like so many in this competition, once they lose the first 4, the rest of the batting looks lost. Not sure how many players they have lost to The Hundread but even 2-3 does make a difference. Good job Norwell had a good stint and then OHD as usual plus the skipper, because the rest were just about keeping us in it. Happy it didn't go down to the last 2 overs as I have no idea who might have had to bowl those if 20 were needed to win.

That can be a real danger and focussing too much on T20 does leave some counties without any focus for the whole season. When Gloucestershire won a lot of one-day cups, they didn't get out of the 2nd division because they just didn't seem bothered and same for Worcestershire after their only T20 success. I remember back in 2012 when Sussex and Somerset were both in with a chance of the CC and played each other the day before T20 final day which they were both involved in. It was a close game and when it rained with Somerset needing 5 wickets and Sussex needing 49, a lot of the commentators/journo's pointed out that both sides just seemed to want to get on a coach and head to Edgbaston instead of trying to win the game and it ended in a draw. I hope that is not a trend whereby CC cricket is not looked upon as being important because T20 bypasses everything.

If it is true that certain players feel pushed out then it must be a bad atmosphere in the dressing room. I am not sure just what sort of team we have to pick any of the sides for any game, but who has the final say in selection and is the one person who does, pick the best team despite what the others say. Some of our sides this season have looked poor and you often wonder what a certain player has done to stay in despite consistently bad performances. The players not picked must scratch their heads in disbelief if they feel their chance should have come. Some of the earlier comments were tongue-in-cheek but there is a general frustration that certain players are going and some have just not progressed very well.

3 Changes.
1) Batting.
2) Bowling.
3) Get the captain to realise that is is alright to bat first occasionally.

Sibley is either having a 'net' or trying to do a 'Gavaskar at Lord's 1975' in the first ever world cup game. I would sooner see us bat first and make 290 than not have a go at chasing this.

By the look of things, it will get to 15 an over well before the 40th over. I would sooner see us get out trying to hit some runs than crawl along leaving inexperienced players needing a ridiculous rate of scoring in the last 10.

After what has just happened in the Test match, it looks like one of those days where you wish you could click your fingers and the whole day gets eradicated from your brain.

Not sure why Rhodes put them in. Not always a successful ploy this season in any format we have played.

Any bowler from South Africa would be coming in after a 3 Test series v England whereas Siraj does not appear to be playing at the moment which means he will be fresher and unlikely to be jaded.

That is a really good question. How would the vote go if you asked people. Do you want a universal game of just T20 games where you might eventually get a crowd of 20000 to watch Germany v France or Spain v Italy or would you prefer Tests, 50 over and T20's where we just have about 15 countries playing to a good standard but still the rest of the world being baffled by the game in any format.

Plenty of pace and hostility but I won't get to see him as there is no more CC cricket at weekends and I will not be taking and 'Sickie's' like I had to last year when an important game was being played for the title.

A good win but it only ever looked like a defeat when Patterson-White was batting. God stuff at the end from OHD and the skipper who had a terrific game.

Coolerking, not double standards, I never said or assumed who did and didn't watch CC cricket but if you are trying to say that the young people who watch 'The Hundread', go to CC games then I would love to see them because when I go to CC I never really see anybody under 20.

Coolerking, you may think it is snobbery but spoonfeeding all the Hundred/T20 to young people, will mean that they don't 'get' CC cricket. If they are fed a game that lasts a day with a positive result then we have no chance of then hoping that they will watch a 4-day game and with it, the safety that goes with sending a young person to a county ground for 4 days as opposed to 1 day and mainly with a parent. In my experience, when watching cricket from the first ever game you see, if you connect with a county, you usually follow all formats whereas now, it seems young people go to just T20 with their parent(s) and the hassle of travelling, safety and time means it is unlikely they will engage with CC and it has nothing to do with 'Snobbery' and your suggestion without knowing me is crass and your sweeping generalisation of people who watch CC is the same as you have no idea what other formats they watch. I am a Bear through and through and watch all formats if Warwickshire are playing, CC, T20 and 50 over.

Have to agree with Andy about the standard of it all. It would be nice to have families watching CC cricket but they do not 'Get It'. The same people who watch a game in The HunDread' will look at a CC game and say "I'm not sitting through 4 days of it when I can see a result in 1, there are fewer boundaries, having fewer people watching creates no atmosphere and I find it slow and boring...". Anyone who is new to cricket cannot understand the nature of the game and why it "Takes so long", they cannot see the benefit of batting all day for 120 and the nature of building an innings is lost on them. At the T20 finals day in 2015 I sat next to a father and son supporting 'The Bears' as they kept referring to them and I asked if they were members which they were not and they turned to another woman and her 2 sons who they knew and both asked if I was and seemed to want to know why I was a member, looking at me strangely when I mentioned the CC and made a face that suggested I was mad to do so. Like so many, they call themselves cricket fans when they were T20 fans and that is the big difference and they cannot see it just like the people who flock to the Hollies stand and call themselves fans because they watch 1 Test per year and a few T20 games. Do the people who watch The Hundread actually care who wins or is it just the thought of 6's flying all over the pace that attracts them. When the thought of a 6 is not a rare thing, will they get bored because once you get bored with 6's being hit, there is nowhere else to go. I see that a lot with youngsters at T20 where initially it is entertaining and then the thought of that feeling lasting, is gone and they find running up the steps in the stands more fulfilling and the game in front of them is given barely a glance. Will the people who watch 'The Hundread' invest their time in the team they watch and even go to the trouble to go to away games and even to finals day at Lord's. In it's 2nd season, this remains to be seen and I doubt it will ever have the same effect that those one-day Lord's finals has from 1963-2005 when after that it got ruined by clogged, confusing and inconsistant fixture lists. No one tried to compare Gillette/B&H/Natwest, etc to CC in the past and it's no good trying to now, they are totally different and I cannot see what a CC fixture can do to make a spectator feel valued, it is massively different to the point that putting music on, having bits of silly dialogue and shout-outs, coloured clothing and people throwing T-shirts in to the crowd would just look ridiculous.

Shame to lose this one as we often fail against a side who are generally talked about as a weak county but we appear to make them look like world-beaters when we play them.

You wouldn't mind if the management could actually explain the decision but we would like to see the local media ask the questions of them in the first place or are they not paying attention.

Unless you have a batting line-up of star batsmen who can/will score very quickly, sometimes grinding out big totals and making sure you are still in the game after 2 1/2 days is often all you can do. I think a lot of journo's (And teams, Kent) were a bit rankled when we won the title in 2004 with just 5 wins and the rest, draws. Some still prattle on about it but what they have to realise is at the time, we were so many points in front of all the other sides, that all we had to do was keep accumulating points and not losing and Knight's habit of winning the toss with a strong batting line-up (At one point, Frost batted at 8 and was averaging in the 90's) proved effective. It was similar in 2012, 1 defeat and 6 wins but 4 of those came in the first 6 games when everyone else was avoiding the rain. I would go back to the 18 county season as it was fun and we had good games without side being bothered about promotion/relegation and more likely to have good finishes to CC games.

The whole of county cricket was more fun in general in the 90's anyway because we all knew when fixtures were played and you could see good players play in the big knock-out games as there was no crossovers in fixtures. Now, we have players missing for T20 finals days and having to 'Get Permission' to play in a cup final and it's this fixture overload that has brought us to this point where we know we cannot see all the best players in the top games. I do think there is still value in the RLODC as there are a lot of good players playing in it if they haven't been stolen for 'The HunDread' and we are able to put out a good side which looks strong and should hopefully win most games. The CC is still 'fun' but if you consider how many counties will never look like winning the title, you can understand the need to just play a game to get a certain result even if it is not entertaining, if it means the chance of being champions.

Well done Mr Garrett, take a big round of applause. We didn't score too well at the end of our innings, from Pandya to Smith, 20 from 29 balls but having young fielders about has made some difference. Not really sure about Norwell to bowl in the last 8 overs but Ollie keeps his head as he so often does.