Exiled Bear wrote:

I'm not very impressed with the Durham commentary. They made out that Benjamin had cheated by stopping the ball when touching the rope, but you could clearly see on the stream that it was fine.
Never mind, we will give them the best medicine by winning and at the moment, it looks very, very simple.

LeicesterExile wrote:

Paul I am watching it on You Tube from the start
I shall do that then, cheers LE.

Would love to be watching it but on the site it just keeps telling me that the live stream will appear when the match starts even though it did so 20 minutes ago.

It did seem strange at the time that Patel was batting that low anyway and then once he gets to the crease as a man known for being a good finisher, he is tactically removed so that a bloke who hasn't faced a ball, can come in and try and win it off the last ball.

Just replayed the last ball that Patel faced and the one we were penalised for and it is 50/50 as to whether or not it was over waist height/ I wouldn't want to be the umpire who gives that but I suppose in a semi/final, you would be able to have another look at it. Well done to all the hardy souls who stayed to watch.

11-12 degrees and a 10% chance of rain but it looks horrible outside and I am not going. There was a thought when I got up that having played so badly in the last2 games, I would settle for an abandonment especially against Notts who are not exactly pushovers.

Not only that, is he batting too low in the order so that by the time he come in, he has too much to do or does not get to face enough balls batting where he does. We have to look at the best way for us to win games and at the moment, it looks like batting first so 'Doing a Grant Elliott' and deciding to bowl is not a good option. Typical of our neighbours to win their first against us after 4 defeats.

Looking as though we will chase 200+ so it begs the question, why did we put them into bat as history says you might as well bat first and we made a mess of chasing down 153 yesterday.

Brooks, Lintott, Miles and Briggs, a total of 9 runs from 18 balls tells it's own story. Why wasn't Briggs up higher, his big hitting in the championship decider last year should have given our management a bit of a clue as to where he should bat. Cannot believe our batting scoring rate in the first 3 games and here we cannot even chase down 153 to win.

And they did not appear to suffer that much in the way they performed and the standards that they set themselves. Even if the ECB suddenly decided to play loads more first-class games, it would mean that if anybody felt they were fatigued, someone else would get a chance. Any batsman with 10 CC games to play would almost certainly get a maximum of 20 innings but that is nowhere near enough. Take into account a big innings of 500+, that would leave almost no chance of getting a 2nd knock and a few weather interruptions also could lead to an opener getting just 15 innings. If that particular opener only played CC games, that would seem like a very short season with little to show for it. Perhaps the answer might be fewer CC games but getting back to playing tourist games which are virtually non-existent now. Either way, less first-class cricket would be a backward step and don't get me started on KP's idea of first-class franchise cricket.

It makes you wonder how the people who make decisions, actually think about the players of the first CC games up to the early 1960's, managed. Before one-day games came along, there were often 30 first class games and that meant 90 days cricket and most players played most games as this was the only format. I bet there were more Test quality players about then and I doubt they thought they would improve with less cricket. Also what is forgotten by the decision makers at the ECB is that less playing time gives you less chance to put things right if you are in bad form. 10 games will never be the answer as weather could reduce the amount you play so it will never be that you get 40 days CC cricket without any interruptions at all. What is needed at the ECB is someone who is a fan and look at the game from their point of view. I wonder how many of them love the game enough to turn up on a cold day in April with 4-5 layers on just to hopefully watch a days play. We need someone like George Dobell to fight the fans corner.

Well if you look on TV now, just about every programme has 'Diverse' presenters, whether or not you think they are any good or not (I think most are not) is up to you but it is happening a lot to TV presenters and announcers everywhere, are they there on merit or for some other reason. Oh! Yes, IMHO.

That is a matter of opinion.

1) Good knock from Benj who looks to be ideal for this form.
2) Great credit to Hose for just taking the sting out of the situation by pushing it about and not trying to rush the total and give Durham even more momentum.
3) It worries me that we make hard work of games like this that should be won fairly comfortably.
4) The announcer was terrible to the point where you had no idea who caught the ball, who bowled it and who the batsman was. Are we becoming like the BBC by making sure there isn't a white bloke doing any job anymore because boxes must be ticked.

It did dawn on me whilst watching last night that Burgess is in such great form, you would have to wonder why he was ever not included in the team.

Cannot believe we nearly blew that but a good finish from Miles in the end. It just goes to show you that even numbers 8-11 know how to hit big and it's never over if you need 10-16 an over with the tail in. Good job we sored all those runs in the final 5 overs.

There cannot have been many days where a side batted for so long having 3 wickets down and saw out 76 overs without any further loss. A lesson in concentration for others to follow.

197-3(91) and Hain/Rhodes are doing an amazing job batting for about 78 overs. Makes you realise that it must be a decent batting surface and we just underperformed in the first innings.

When Davies plays exactly the same way over and over again and keeps failing then you have to question his place in the team. Surely the idea is to learn from your mistakes but he is not.

I agree wholeheartedly about the 'loose balls' aspect of our bowling. Watching the games v Surrey, Essex and Northants, I was unimpressed with the amount of 'Half-trackers' we bowled and if you are not getting wickets, the fact that runs are coming so quickly, means a game can get away from you in just a session. It looks highly unlikely that we will retain our title and you can imagine all the 'They didn't deserve it last season and this proves it' comments which will be lined up in September.