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Durham v Kent (h) C.C. ( 3/4/26)


Some promising performances but we lack depth, especially in the bowling department, and our spin options are as weak as anything in the country.

Not sure why we picked Ackermann ahead of Rhodes, particularly given how little spin was bowled in the match.

Potts in particularly bowled excellently today with limited reward/luck. Him and Raine will have a lot resting on them.
 
The Breen Machine said:
Some promising performances but we lack depth, especially in the bowling department, and our spin options are as weak as anything in the country.

Not sure why we picked Ackermann ahead of Rhodes, particularly given how little spin was bowled in the match.

Potts in particularly bowled excellently today with limited reward/luck. Him and Raine will have a lot resting on them.
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Rhodes was withdrawn from the squad on medical advice.
 
Raymondo said:
You started your post by saying ‘you need to see improvement’. By that metric, I’m simply saying that you need to give the team more chance than one game to judge whether they’ve improved or not. It’s a new season, in a new division with several new faces in the side. Like I say, I’m willing to be a little more patient than Week 1 to write them off.

I also don’t think you can speak of ‘current form’ by lumping this in with all of last season - they’ve had a break of around 6 months between games.

We have several match winners in our side, they weren’t able to get the job done today, but I’m hopeful we’ll see some of it in the coming weeks.


I was impressed by Aldridge in the first innings, not so much today, but then he did have a drop in the slips and a very good lbw shout (it was plumb) turned down. If either of those go his way it’s a different game. As the day wore on he looked leggy, but that’s to be expected given his inexperience.

As a general point though, if any team lost their main two bowlers you could argue they’d be in the same predicament that you speak of.
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Mental gymnastics. Do you work for the club?

Sorry but six months doesn't wipe the slate clean when you bring the same technical faults and hesitancy to the crease. I can see with my own eyes Potts has improved. Robinson, Lees, Ackerman have not.
bedlington mackem said:
Had to be the only reason Ackermann played cos he is bang out of form.
We missed Rhodes with bat and ball ...hopefully he will be fit to play against Gloucester
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Ackerman wasn't in the original squad, so presumably replaced Rhodes who had a medical issue.
 
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smoker said:
Mental gymnastics. Do you work for the club?
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Did you see my comments on Day 3? :lol:

smoker said:
Sorry but six months doesn't wipe the slate clean when you bring the same technical faults and hesitancy to the crease. I can see with my own eyes Potts has improved. Robinson, Lees, Ackerman have not.
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Who said anything about wiping the slate clean?

All I’m saying is that you should probably give the team more than one game after a substantial break without any cricket before your toys go out the pram.

I’d also suggest that it’s too soon to draw a positive conclusion regarding Potts too, as pleasing as it was to see his performance this weekend.
 
Raymondo said:
Did you see my comments on Day 3? :lol:



Who said anything about wiping the slate clean?

All I’m saying is that you should probably give the team more than one game after a substantial break without any cricket before your toys go out the pram.

I’d also suggest that it’s too soon to draw a positive conclusion regarding Potts too, as pleasing as it was to see his performance this weekend.
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Nobody has "threw toys out of the pram". Really!!
Rather, how realistic is it that season long and longer shortcomings by those batsmen named are going to suddenly be rectified? Possibly Benks can do so if they're prepared to listen to him.
Poet's resurgence has been explained by both Potts himself and Campbell.
Ackerman wouldn't have been in the team so he's no loss, we're stuck with Lees and although past his best but is still useful. I am concerned about Robinson but both Bowman and Mustard look promising - Every cloud has a silver lining
 
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I'm feelding a lot more positive than I was. It was a good game and Durham were playing posotive cricket with some good performances. A big change from last year

But ---- I hope this pitch is typical of what we can expectfrom this point onwards and Vic doesn't produce a series of heartbreakers like last year.

And we can point to a few batsmen who, simply put, need to get better. Ackerman and Robinson obviously and a lot better than they are showing. And McKinney, who is sometimes talked of as a potential England player, gets out far to easily and put more scores on the board.

But still, overall a step in the right direction.

I liked Casey Aldridge, for his first game for us, he was ok.
 
Parkside said:
Nobody has "threw toys out of the pram". Really!!
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You can argue the turn of phrase if you want, even though I wasn’t addressing you, but I stand by my stance that folk shouldn’t be writing this team off after one game. Especially when the second innings wasn’t played in ‘normal circumstances’ as we were trying to push the issue and score quick runs to setup a chase.

Parkside said:
Rather, how realistic is it that season long and longer shortcomings by those batsmen named are going to suddenly be rectified? Possibly Benks can do so if they're prepared to listen to him.
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I’ve no problem lamenting the longer form of the batsmen, I’ve done plenty of that myself, but we’ve essentially got a new regime in place and I’m prepared to give them time to make the necessary adjustments.

If come the end of this block of Championship fixtures it’s still shite, fair enough.

Parkside said:
Poet's resurgence has been explained by both Potts himself and Campbell.
Ackerman wouldn't have been in the team so he's no loss, we're stuck with Lees and although past his best but is still useful. I am concerned about Robinson but both Bowman and Mustard look promising - Every cloud has a silver lining
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It’s interesting that a couple of people have mentioned Lees, but he still averaged over 40 last year in a perceived ‘struggle’. I think from memory the figure was 42, down from 47 the year before, so whilst clearly that was a drop off (he averaged 70 in our 2023 Division Two title win), anything over 40 for an opener in the red ball game is more than serviceable in my view.

Robinson, as I’ve stated elsewhere is a huge worry, but I spent a lot of the time last year and over the winter preaching how he should drop to number 7 because whilst it may help him find his form again, long term I feel that’s where he can be most effective given his batting style and thankfully he’s now in that spot.
 
Raymondo said:
You can argue the turn of phrase if you want, even though I wasn’t addressing you, but I stand by my stance that folk shouldn’t be writing this team off after one game. Especially when the second innings wasn’t played in ‘normal circumstances’ as we were trying to push the issue and score quick runs to setup a chase.



I’ve no problem lamenting the longer form of the batsmen, I’ve done plenty of that myself, but we’ve essentially got a new regime in place and I’m prepared to give them time to make the necessary adjustments.

If come the end of this block of Championship fixtures it’s still shite, fair enough.



It’s interesting that a couple of people have mentioned Lees, but he still averaged over 40 last year in a perceived ‘struggle’. I think from memory the figure was 42, down from 47 the year before, so whilst clearly that was a drop off (he averaged 70 in our 2023 Division Two title win), anything over 40 for an opener in the red ball game is more than serviceable in my view.

Robinson, as I’ve stated elsewhere is a huge worry, but I spent a lot of the time last year and over the winter preaching how he should drop to number 7 because whilst it may help him find his form again, long term I feel that’s where he can be most effective given his batting style and thankfully he’s now in that spot.
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Bri said:
I'm feelding a lot more positive than I was. It was a good game and Durham were playing posotive cricket with some good performances. A big change from last year

But ---- I hope this pitch is typical of what we can expectfrom this point onwards and Vic doesn't produce a series of heartbreakers like last year.

And we can point to a few batsmen who, simply put, need to get better. Ackerman and Robinson obviously and a lot better than they are showing. And McKinney, who is sometimes talked of as a potential England player, gets out far to easily and put more scores on the board.

But still, overall a step in the right direction.

I liked Casey Aldridge, for his first game for us, he was ok.
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Aldridge was a real positive, fully agree with your sentiment on step in the right direction but we need to start getting over the line and racking up the wins.

On the pitch, I still feel like it went very flat and was difficult for the bowlers to extract any sort of movement or help once the ball was 25 overs or so old. I mentioned earlier in the thread that Vic might need to look at ways to spice things up a bit come the last day.
 
Fair comment,it was the toys out of the pram comment I thought was a bit ott. Basically my post #370 is broadly in agreement with what you've posted.
Raymondo said:
You can argue the turn of phrase if you want, even though I wasn’t addressing you, but I stand by my stance that folk shouldn’t be writing this team off after one game. Especially when the second innings wasn’t played in ‘normal circumstances’ as we were trying to push the issue and score quick runs to setup a chase.



I’ve no problem lamenting the longer form of the batsmen, I’ve done plenty of that myself, but we’ve essentially got a new regime in place and I’m prepared to give them time to make the necessary adjustments.

If come the end of this block of Championship fixtures it’s still shite, fair enough.



It’s interesting that a couple of people have mentioned Lees, but he still averaged over 40 last year in a perceived ‘struggle’. I think from memory the figure was 42, down from 47 the year before, so whilst clearly that was a drop off (he averaged 70 in our 2023 Division Two title win), anything over 40 for an opener in the red ball game is more than serviceable in my view.

Robinson, as I’ve stated elsewhere is a huge worry, but I spent a lot of the time last year and over the winter preaching how he should drop to number 7 because whilst it may help him find his form again, long term I feel that’s where he can be most effective given his batting style and thankfully he’s now in that spot.
Click to expand...
 
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Raymondo said:
You can argue the turn of phrase if you want, even though I wasn’t addressing you, but I stand by my stance that folk shouldn’t be writing this team off after one game. Especially when the second innings wasn’t played in ‘normal circumstances’ as we were trying to push the issue and score quick runs to setup a chase.



I’ve no problem lamenting the longer form of the batsmen, I’ve done plenty of that myself, but we’ve essentially got a new regime in place and I’m prepared to give them time to make the necessary adjustments.

If come the end of this block of Championship fixtures it’s still shite, fair enough.



It’s interesting that a couple of people have mentioned Lees, but he still averaged over 40 last year in a perceived ‘struggle’. I think from memory the figure was 42, down from 47 the year before, so whilst clearly that was a drop off (he averaged 70 in our 2023 Division Two title win), anything over 40 for an opener in the red ball game is more than serviceable in my view.

Robinson, as I’ve stated elsewhere is a huge worry, but I spent a lot of the time last year and over the winter preaching how he should drop to number 7 because whilst it may help him find his form again, long term I feel that’s where he can be most effective given his batting style and thankfully he’s now in that spot.
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Nobody is writing the team off "after one game" because it's a complete straw man. There were significant problems with the team last season and on evidence of the warm up and first game most have not been properly addressed, I.e. poor batting technique, weak leadership, mental fragility, mini batting collapses, lack of bowling depth and over-reliance on too few key individuals. Campbell doesn't get the privilege of everyone forgetting about that because they had six months off and signed a couple of players.
 
Raymondo said:
First century of the county season goes to Emilio Gay :cool:

Followed swiftly by the first example of the umpires being soft as shite and going off when there’s nothing wrong with the light.
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Surendiran Shanmugam at it again.......from Twitter.

In 40+ years of covering county cricket at
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I’m struggling to recall another instance of losing the equivalent of a full day’s play with no rain. And remember, this is NOT down to one or other of the teams not wanting to play! Solely down to the umpires. Frustrating.

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Dan..Dan..Dan..Dan said:
Surendiran Shanmugam at it again.......from Twitter.

In 40+ years of covering county cricket at
You must be logged on to see external links

I’m struggling to recall another instance of losing the equivalent of a full day’s play with no rain. And remember, this is NOT down to one or other of the teams not wanting to play! Solely down to the umpires. Frustrating.

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Needs dropping down to the Sheffield Imperial League.
 
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