Sunday 25 April 2010

Gloucestershire v Derbyshire CB40

Well, we started both innings well, but there's otherwise little positive to report on Derbyshire's first CB40 game of the new campaign.

To be fair, we were undone by a special innings from New Zealand all rounder James Franklin, whose unbeaten 133 took them to a total that was always going to take some getting. No bowler took a real caning, but anything over 200, with the way the Bristol track has played this year, was going to take some getting.

Chesney Hughes got us off to a flyer and even after his and Wayne Madsen's dismissal, at 78-2 in 16 we were in the game. The advent of Gidman and Ireland slowed the run rate, however and we had no one who could bat through, essential to win in such circumstances.

I'm writing this with the score 139-7 in 32. That's 61 runs in the next sixteen overs for five wickets. Unless something spectacular happens, the campaign has got off to an all too familiar start. It won't of course, unless Loots Bosman is next in disguised as Tom Lungley...

It would be foolish to write off our one day hopes on the basis of this game, just as it would have been silly to write off our Championship aspirations on the back of the Leicestershire game. What is clear, however, is that we need to learn from this loss - and quickly - as we were never really in it after Greg Smith's dismissal.

I exchanged texts with a friend after 21 overs, saying we'd lost this as the impetus had gone. We had that in the early innings with good running between the wickets, but it disappeared. The pacing of an innings is crucial in one day cricket. All smash is no good either over the longer distance, but there has to be a combination of the two, something we need to learn pretty quickly.

154-8 in 33 as I close. Some lusty blows from Sads, but all to naught, I'm sure, in the end.

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