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My thoughts as a “veteran” member

Black_Cats1879

Black_Cats1879

Winger
Contributor
I posted this in a thread but I think it’s worthy of its own topic here:


This raises a point I made with my dad before the match last night. I’ve been coming to T20 since 2016 and every year we’ve sat through season after season of decline at this club.

What it shows is that Durham can’t raise young, talented white ball players and they’re basically left to buy the scraps from other teams. Last night shows they can’t bat or field and were totally outclassed by a team that took over 10 overs to beat 101. Stupid lazy bowling and poor batting tactics see us lose every single evening to the same fowls: lifting the ball up and watching as the fielders barely move to catch us out.

The academy (if you could even call it that) is clearly woeful in every sense of the word and fails to do it’s most basic duty of recruiting and raising youngsters. Contrast that with the academy of light.

Last year we (and I) blamed Franklin but this goes far deeper than that. We have a clear skills gap here.

The atmosphere in the ground is woeful as well. We have a player getting banned for betting but slap advertisements for betting companies and even let one sponsor the new livestream all over the ground.

People moan on and say “ah well it’s not proper cricket” which is fine but remember it’s the only format that consistently fills the bar and stands.

Not. Good. Enough.
 

I assume its very similar to my theory on Yorkshire, where "proper cricket" is revered and prioritised, "proper batting" taught from a young age and conditions just don't suit limited overs cricket.
 
I think this arises from recent frustrations and is a bit unfair. It's easy to think back and see quite a few good white ball players raised and schooled at Durham. Not a lot but then Durham prioritises first class cricket and that's exactly what I want as it's more interesting.

But granted good, special players are hard to see from the current squad Carse (!), Stokes (who prefers first class cricket anyway), Clark, Raine. A good proportion of the squad are still developing or not home grown anyway.

And none, apart from Stokes, can stand with Colly or the Colonel imho.

I think the academy are trying their best, and probably trying to produce well rounded cricketers from a young age and allows them to develop into the they type of bowler that suits them as individuals, e.g. Potts.
 
I mentioned it on the other thread but just comparing the ages of our starting XI to the rest of the northern group counties in the T20 this year it's clear we have the most players aged 30+ (7 of our 11) and not a single one under the age of 25. That and our inability to play an attacking brand of T20 cricket has left us well behind other counties in the white ball game.

Let's face it we aren't going to qualify for the quarters so we might as well use the rest of the competition to allow the likes of Mustard, McKinney, Hogg etc to gain first team experience.
 
GordonMuchallNo1Fan said:
Swinging a golf club around isn't exactly resting is it?
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ni that’s the exact point I’m making!
mosi said:
I assume then that you never have a day off from whatever you do?
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No problems with him “taking a day off work” but it’s bad form to flex your 10k gold club set whilst your “team” is battling it out in the green… could at least show his mug as moral support?
 
Twisted said:
In fairness, working in drug and alcohol services I spend most of my time either working or practicing by gathering lived experience.
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That’s dedication for you. Sounds like Stokes should be taking a leaf out of your book, him being such a slacker an all that.
 
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