CC :: Gloucestershire v Durham

[Parkside]

Badger is a generic nickname for an elderly cricket fan. I used it well before I heard Scott Borthwick had been called that. I have several friends, up and down the country who are mad keen cricket fans and they call themselves "BADGERS".
You clearly are a keen cricket fan but you will have calm down and be more supportive of cricketers and cricket in general before we would call you a BADGER.

Badger is a generic name applied to a fanatical follower of any sport or pastime and not, I believe confined solely to cricket. Difficult though, I believe, for a fanatic to be wholly objective when so keen for the team to do well. I'd certainly plead guilty to that shortcoming at times.
This Borthwick love-in equally lacks objectivity. How many No 3s would have survived the season intact with an aggregate of < 500 runs and an average in the low 20s. We even had one poster elevating his captaincy to the Benaud/Brearly level - that's hardly objective. Borthwick fully deserves his moniker Badger,he clearly loves his cricket but that shouldn't absolve him from criticism.

 

[TravellingMackem]

Typical attack the poster not the argument crack.

I really like SB. He's from within spitting distance of where I grew up, a top lad by all accounts, comes across great in interviews and was absolutely fantastic in his first stint at Durham. I didn't even have any beef with him moving to Surrey when we were demoted.

None of this clouds my judgement.

This season he has been in the sort of batting and bowling form that would have seen anyone else dropped to the second XI and let several games drift away to draws with passive captaincy, Northants the other week being the most obvious example. Other than one or two games, we've "played all the cricket", yet ended up with a lower half finish. How? Umpires, rain, wickets, scheduling, bad luck - all the usual explanations but never look close to home, like why has he got men back on the boundary when Northants are trying to block out a draw, and why is he bringing himself on ten overs too late, when the opposition has been filling their boots from our tired seamers and we just need to get through a few overs to the new ball. He's arguably kept Trevaskis out of the team who has more than justified his selection the last few games - with ball and bat.

But for the fact I can't actually think of any obvious leadership types who deserve to be in the team on merit (Eckersley proved to be a poor captain in the BWT), I'd be tempted to make him white ball captain and play himself back into contention for the CC side in the seconds. Trevaskis must play every game next season and SB must improve his batting to warrant selection on at least one discipline. The fact Surrey fans are saying this is exactly what he was like for them should concern you....none so blind as will not see.

The captain's role is to implement the tactics. The coaches get the best out of players.

Did you miss Trevaskis's five-fer? He has averaged 20 with the ball in his three CC games and was good in the RLC. Give him a run,

The captains role isn’t just that though. That’s very narrow minded. The captain, coach and indeed experienced players like Rushy too, work as a team to both create a culture within the dressing room and to develop match tactics. They don’t just walk out there and do whatever Scotty thinks up off the hoof. So you can’t credit the management for some of that AND use the other half of it to bash the captain.

 

[smoker]

The captains role isn’t just that though. That’s very narrow minded. The captain, coach and indeed experienced players like Rushy too, work as a team to both create a culture within the dressing room and to develop match tactics. They don’t just walk out there and do whatever Scotty thinks up off the hoof. So you can’t credit the management for some of that AND use the other half of it to bash the captain.

A captain's job is to motivate the players. Can't knock him for that, they always seem up for it. But he could still contribute to that culture as a senior player.

I'm fully aware that certain tactics are partly down to the coach (and I've been critical of Silverwood for getting stuff wrong), but that will be mainly strategic stuff like who plays, who opens the bowling, batting order and the like. Operational decisions like bowling and field changes are made on the spot by the captain and he's getting too many wrong.

Has he ever captained a side before Durham this season? According to the interviews it sounded like it was part of the offer to bring him back to the club. To my mind this is wrong, as it made him undroppable. He should have been brought in for his batting and then a player selected from the squad as captain for the season.

This is a moot discussion TBF as, unless we bring someone else in specifically to act as captain, he will get another year as there aren't any outstanding contenders. I don't even know who our vice captain is! If it's the same again next year though....

 

[bumble2]

Of course we do not know what the forthcoming meetings will decide about the divisional structure for the start of 2022, but there appear to me to be two clear options:

Either:
1) Use positions and structure as originally planned for 2022 before Covid wrecked everything (ie 10 teams in Division 1 and 8 in Division 2) with Notts (as relegated 2019) in Div 2 and Lancs, Northants and Gloucester promoted to Div 1;

Or
2) Use final (average) points according to 2021 results. By simply adding the points from the ten group games to the points for the four (or three for Surrey and Durham) games actually played in Divs 1, 2 & 3, we can get a single table. The top ten go into the new Div 1 and the bottom eight into Div 2.

On that basis, according to my calculations, positions as of Monday night (on average points for all teams) would be as follows:

1 Nottinghamshire
2 Hampshire
3 Lancashire
4 Essex
5 Yorkshire
6 Durham
7 Warwickshire
8 Gloucestershire
9 Kent
10 Northamptonshire

11 Somerset
12 Leicestershire
13 Surrey
14 Middlesex
15 Glamorgan
16 Worcestershire
17 Sussex
18 Derbyshire

This will of course change a bit at the end of the current round of games but, as currently shown would mean Notts returning to Div1, Durham going up too, and relegations for Surrey and Somerset.

I am not optimistic that the Counties will be brave enough though!

For the sake of completeness I have updated the table using the basis described above to account for this week’s final results.

The outcome is that Somerset stay up but Northants go down. Durham dropped from 6th to 8th following the loss at Gloucester.

All theoretical of course.

		P	Won	Lost	Drwn	BatBP	BowBP	Adj	Pts	av pts
1​	Nottinghamshire	14​	7​	3​	4​	34​	41​	0​	219​	15.64
2​	Lancashire	14​	6​	2​	6​	29​	34​	0​	207​	14.79
3​	Essex	14​	6​	2​	6​	24​	38​	0​	206​	14.71
4​	Warwickshire	14​	6​	2​	6​	23​	35​	-1​	201​	14.36
5​	Hampshire	14​	6​	3​	5​	24​	38​	0​	198​	14.14
6​	Gloucestershire	14​	8​	4​	2​	18​	33​	0​	195​	13.93
7​	Yorkshire	14​	6​	3​	5​	18​	35​	0​	189​	13.50
8​	Durham	13​	4​	3​	6​	24​	39​	-3​	172​	13.23
9​	Kent	14​	4​	3​	7​	22​	38​	0​	180​	12.86
10​	Somerset	14​	4​	5​	5​	29​	37​	-8​	162​	11.57
11​	Northamptonshire	14​	4​	5​	5​	25​	32​	0​	161​	11.50
12​	Worcestershire	14​	3​	5​	6​	29​	33​	0​	158​	11.29
13​	Leicestershire	14​	3​	6​	5​	31​	35​	0​	154​	11.00
14​	Middlesex	14​	5​	8​	1​	22​	42​	-1​	151​	10.79
15​	Glamorgan	14​	2​	5​	7​	26​	36​	0​	150​	10.71
16​	Surrey	13​	2​	3​	7​	21​	28​	0​	137​	10.54
17​	Derbyshire	14​	1​	7​	6​	18​	33​	-1​	114​	8.14
18​	Sussex	14​	1​	9​	4​	30​	34​	0​	112​

 

[Parkside]

Brilliant -a logical and fair way of deciding the composition of next year's divisions. So there's no f* cking chance of it happening.

 

[Mr Redknapp]

On the subject of Borthwick I've been very disappointed with his performances this season. Hope things can improve next season for him as on his day he's a good player

Ha'way mate no room for constructive criticism on around these parts

 

[smoker]

Brilliant -a logical and fair way of deciding the composition of next year's divisions. So there's no f* cking chance of it happening.

There's no chance they will put us in division 1 and Surrey and Middlessx in division 2. Probably run the conference system over and over till they get the outcome they want.

 

[mosi]

There's no chance they will put us in division 1 and Surrey and Middlessx in division 2. Probably run the conference system over and over till they get the outcome they want.

I think we can guess which clubs are opposing a return to the 2 division format. But if it goes to a majority vote, we might have a chance - not that I’m holding my breath, as I expect that the process will be as opaque as ECB can make it.