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County Cricket 2013
Thought I'd start this season's thread with a tip that I saw on the Sporting Life site
Surrey are 8/1 for the first division and can be backed each way (3 places)
Seems a good price with Graeme Smith available all season and unlikely to lose many players to England call ups ( possibly Meaker and Dernbach..I dont count KP as I dont expect him to play county cricket)
They've also signed Gary Keedy from Lancs and Vickam Solanki from Worcestershire to add experience to an otherwise young squad
Surrey are 8/1 for the first division and can be backed each way (3 places)
Seems a good price with Graeme Smith available all season and unlikely to lose many players to England call ups ( possibly Meaker and Dernbach..I dont count KP as I dont expect him to play county cricket)
They've also signed Gary Keedy from Lancs and Vickam Solanki from Worcestershire to add experience to an otherwise young squad
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They'll need one of the young batsmen to step up toi the next level (beyond promising) to have a serious chance but they have the bowling if they can get off to a decent start.
Rory Burns might be the batsman to look out for.
Quote:
In a carefully-worded statement, Sussex said: "Whilst the club can confirm that initial and informal conversations have taken place between Sussex coaching staff and England women's coach Mark Lane it needs to be stressed that these are at a very embryonic stage.
Full Story :
http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/current/story/601019.html
'Only' the 2nd X1 atm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/21162322
I was about to post that I hope the snow has gone by then but then I read your link
I forgot this is now in Abu Dhabi
(I've been to a couple of these at Lords in the 80's - not much play but an opportunity to talk to the players )
The domestic season approaches, Wisden gets launched, the linseed oil is bought out and where is the first showpiece match being played? The UAE.
Is the game like football all of a sudden, so healthy domestically that the marketeers feel the need to promote our domestic game to overseas markets?
Who is this match catering to?
- the ex-pat UK population in the UAE? Do any of them go?
- the ex pat Sub continent population in the UAE? Their domestic cricket is 2 / 3 hours away and most of them are working long grinding hours so can rarely get to live events.
- local arab UAE population?
I don't get it.
And now we hear that there is a new committee being set up to revamp the tired T20 format.
Coals to Newcastle comes to mind, or maybe chickens voting to ban Christmas is more apt? The Chairman of Essex, one of the Counties who are still doing well with their gates, is leading the committee.
The ECB and the Counties have failed to grasp the basic concept of demand and supply.
There has been too much T20 cricket and that's the main issue.
The cricket itself is terrific with the pros taking it as seriously as any other format. A long time ago, T20 stopped being a fun and casual knock about between other formats for the players.
And we don't need expensive overseas players when we are investing millions in academies producing lots of talented young players.
If we aren't careful, we'll see the day when Abdur Razzak will have played for all 18 counties at this rate. Nothing against him. He is a fine player but one of a group of predominantly Pakistani all rounders who have received a massive pay day as a result of the Counties' belief that only overseas players will make the cricket interesting.
Get the young English talent involved.
As I've suggested before and I'm not the first one, they don't need to refresh anything. They need to cut down the number of games and their timing. They need to cut out all the b/s razzamatzz at grounds, not add to it and if they are still hauling out the expression, 'need to get young people into the game, just what have they done for the last decade with all the kids who have attended matches?
Where is the tracking of these youngsters to see how many were already playing, how many tried it out new as a result of going to a T20 match? Where is the system, a website possibly, where kids can look up all the clubs within a 5-10 mile radius of their home who have colts programmes and would welcome new kids?
Hilliard wants harder pitches for more 6's. I want closer matches as this is what is exciting about the game whatever the format. Someone wants flashing bails like in the Aussie Big Bsh, others feel that this is 'garish tripe'.
All I can say is that the matches I went to last year at Lancashire were great matches with fine batting,. bowling and fielding. My main beef is all the loud and intrusive razzamatazz which you are subjected to; I wish I could turn it off, as the cricket is brilliant in its' own right.
This is what we should be educating our young boys and girls about not creating an environment where they feel like they've been to a party and had a few dances in their seats while not really knowing what was going on 100 yards ahead of them out on the field of play.
Are there any updates regarding county cricket internet commentaries from the BBC?
According to this , local BBC radio will continue the commentaries this year, and some games will be on Sports Extra as well
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/15665499
Good news. With no Olympics this year , here should be more spare hours on Sports Extra as well
I must admit , although I am very pleased that they are continuing the local radio internet commentaries, I am a bit surprised. They must get very few listeners perhaps less than a hundred at most. It must be very cheap to broadcast and I suppose the guys have to be at the match in any case to do updates of the scores .
Although I don't have a link , I understand that the ECB are outlawing declaration bowling in County Championship games this year. I'm not sure why , as it is hardly the problem it was 20 years or so ago when possibly as many as half of three day games had to employ declaration bowling to get a game completed. The definition of declaration bowling will have to be made clear.A team could still use non bowlers, bowling normally , but with six slips and two short legs making run getting simple.. I'm sure there will be some explanation shortly .
Does that mean it's the end of Jade Dernbach's career.......:D
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/9868824/Brian-Langford.html
He holds a unique record in that in a Sunday League game in 1969 he had the bowling figures of 8-8-0-0. No-one is ever going to match that .
Just having a home ground to play in would be a start.
*Looks at recent photograph of OT with The Pointless, Pavilion half demolished, grossly ugly media centre*
Nah. Can we go back to Aigburth and Stanners???
Thanks for posting, David.
I've put that link on the Facebook page for my new updated website / blog (lots about cricket memorabilia as well as general cricket);
http://www.facebook.com/goalsandwickets?ref=hl
New site is here;
http://www.goalsandwickets.co.uk/
Tennisman . I have taken note of your links
I remember 1969 very well.In one game Brian Bolus and ( I think) Pasty Harris , put on about 16 in the first 10 overs. and Notts got about160 which was regarded as a good score then. They also used to have John Player girls handing out free cigarettes to spectators , even those of us who were 14 at the time . How times have changed , you can't even smoke at Trent Bridge these days unless you hide behind the stand !
Excuse my rampant plugging, David.:)
Checking the scores in those early days, 160 was indeed felt to be a good score but as discussed before, these lower scores by even 1980's standards, were often because experienced veterans refused to bat any different to in CC games, Monday to Saturday.
30 yard circles, improved techniques (Clive Radley-style), changed attitudes, better tracks, heavier bats and shorter boundaries all contributed to a gradual increase in what was regarded as a par score.
Having said all the above, at Lord's, Middlesex would often play on strips closer to either the Tavern or the Grandstand. I remember on one occasion, Trevor Jesty being smacked for 26 by Smokey Featherstone as boundary after boundary crashed into the Grandstand seats.
Some, it was inferred were angry about having their 7th day of the week turned into a working one.
1. Central Contracts have been great for the England National team but the counties really suffer. Im an Essex lad orginally and I used to be able to pop in after school when they played at Valentines Park and see Gooch & Fletcher and Lever - these days how often do Essex fans get to see Cook?
2. Similarly the lack of top class overseas players
3. And a huge one for the - the season is so hard to follow. It used to be easy - most County games started on the same day of the week, so you felt it was a real competition. They were played all of the times, with gaps made for B&H and Gillette/Nat West, plus the JPL on a Sunday. The season was coherent. Nowadays its harder to engage
I know I sound like I'm looking back with rose tinted glasses to a time that will never return, but I do feel it could be much better organised and promoted
Hope we get some good weather as I will make a few trips down to the Oval to spectate
The Championship has the same 'allure' as it's had in the 40 years that I have watched cricket. It hasn't been that important since, maybe, the 1950s.
Central Contracts were a wonderful move. The Test/International team has improved because of it - and that matters more. I'd rather see Cook scoring runs for England than playing for Essex all the time and arriving at a Test Match (the day before, as it used to be) physically and mentally below the required level.
The lack of top Overseas players is largely due to the fuller international programme (and I doubt even the most ardent Essex fan thought "I must go and see Norbert Phillip play":(). Also, as I have seen in cricket (at Club as well as County level) and other sports the "overseas star" can have a detrimental effect on young home players as they defer to the star and don't take as much responsibility. And and lot of those top players used the Championship and as finishing school for their own game (see the West Indies in the 70s).
I agree about the spread of games through the season. I have posted here before that the season needs a structure that gives a proper narrative rather than dropping in bits in a scattergun way.
And it looks as though I shall have to like Ricky Ponting for a couple of months - that will not be easy;)
A couple of years ago I fancied going to the Oval more to watch some CC cricket. There was just 1 four-day match in June/July/August there, with the rest at the extremities of the season or away at outgrounds where there is barely any facilities for members.
Furthermore the schedulers seem to forget people work during the week, so a match starting on Wednesday will mean only Saturday is available for those who work - and by then the match is often over, a foregone conclusion or a stonewall draw.
Do you think Viv Richards, for example, was bad for Somerset and county cricket? (On the spectator side, living in Taunton at the time would have been my idea of cricket heaven.)
And just at Notts we will have Ed Cowan and David Hussey covering almost the whole season , and England players like Patel , Hales and Lumb who will play most of the season . Broad and Swann will also play a couple of games I imagine,
From 2014 the season's fixtures are changing with almost all games starting on a Sunday and the 20/20 games on a Friday throughout the season. Hopefully we will no longer have the Championship games restricted to the beginning and end of the season
And also wee Jimmy Taylor, almost forgot about him . Another baby faced assassin like Joe Root