Still an absolute joke - four CC games in April and three in September. That's half the fixtures in those two months with the first game starting on 7th April. And we wonder why we don't have people watching cricket in the freezing cold, why we don't produce Test batsmen or spinners.
The Royal London will compete with The Hundred once again - we will almost certainly lose Billings, DBD, Cox, Blake, Denly, Milnes, Klaassen, Qais Ahmad plus possibly Linde, Blake and Leaning. That is, potentially, a whole team. We are in a stronger position, squad wise, than last year but it will only take a couple of injuries and we will be scouring the local leagues for players. It does make the competition second rate - I wonder how Royal London feel about that. Equally, with the World Cup next year, how to prospective middle order batsmen stake a claim? Based on the half a dozen balls they hit in T20 at the end of an innings I assume.
Still an absolute joke - four CC games in April and three in September. That's half the fixtures in those two months with the first game starting on 7th April. And we wonder why we don't have people watching cricket in the freezing cold, why we don't produce Test batsmen or spinners.
The Royal London will compete with The Hundred once again - we will almost certainly lose Billings, DBD, Cox, Blake, Denly, Milnes, Klaassen, Qais Ahmad plus possibly Linde, Blake and Leaning. That is, potentially, a whole team. We are in a stronger position, squad wise, than last year but it will only take a couple of injuries and we will be scouring the local leagues for players. It does make the competition second rate - I wonder how Royal London feel about that. Equally, with the World Cup next year, how to prospective middle order batsmen stake a claim? Based on the half a dozen balls they hit in T20 at the end of an innings I assume.
Agreed, it's bizarre that England go all out to win the 50 over World Cup, then immediately downgrade the only domestic 50 over competition into a Papa Johns/JPT type competition.
Jas has been bowling OK with no opposition taking him apart but without taking loads of wickets. Due to Covid, the two day consecutive Saturday red ball matches have been converted to one day 50 over white ball games which doesn't suit him as much for obvious reasons.
Today Jas returned figures with the ball of 8-0-31-0 for Northern Districts against Kensington. It was with the bat that Jas proved to be the unlikely hero though. He came in at 9 with the score on 142-7 and his side still needing 80 off 11.3 overs to win. Jas hit one 4 and four 6's on his way to 54 not out off 38 balls with the winning maximum coming off the penultimate ball of the final over to win by two wickets. The second ball in this clip is the shot in question:
Jas might one day become a lower order all rounder because he has the ability and levers to do what he did today. Here's hoping that he does it for Kent in the not too distant future!
South Africa are currently 39-4 in the 1st Test against NZ. Some bloke called Matt Henry currently has figures of 7-3-15-3 and has taken the wickets of Elgar, Markram and vd Dussen!
Henry finishes with 7-23 as S A are bowled out for 95. He took 4-0 at one point!
Looking forward to the second half of the season when we have Henry one end and Stevens the other. If we can score some runs too then there is no reason why we shouldn't do pretty well.
Henry scored 58 not out coming in at 11 and shared a 10th wicket partnership of 94 with Blundell. That was Henry's 2nd Test 50 and his 7th First Class half century. He averages 22.61 in Tests - more than some of the players who have been batting at 8 for England recently.
NZ made 482 in reply to SA's 95. Henry then took another wicket in SA's 2nd innings and SA were 4-3 at one point but recovered to 34-3 at close.
With 8-36 in the match to date and 58 not out with the bat, you won't be able to get a bet on who will be MOM!
Henry scored 58 not out coming in at 11 and shared a 10th wicket partnership of 94 with Blundell. That was Henry's 2nd Test 50 and his 7th First Class half century. He averages 22.61 in Tests - more than some of the players who have been batting at 1-5 for England recently.
NZ made 482 in reply to SA's 95. Henry then took another wicket in SA's 2nd innings and SA were 4-3 at one point but recovered to 34-3 at close.
With 8-36 in the match to date and 58 not out with the bat, you won't be able to get a bet on who will be MOM!
Thinking of getting a season ticket/membership this year as my old man doesn't go to Charlton anymore and this is just down the road. Anyone else got one and think it's worth it?
Henry finished for the SA 2nd innings with figures of 11-4-32-2 to make 26-11-55-9 in the match.
SA mustered just 111 to go with their 95 in the 1st innings meaning that they lost by an innings and 276 runs. It really doesn't get much worse than that!
Jackson Bird is joining us for the first six CC games so, with Henry coming for the back end of the season, we will have a quality overseas seamer for virtually all of the season
Bird played for Tasmania against NSW in the Sheffield Shield this week. His match figures were 35.5-16-81-5. Repeating that form every game for us will do just fine.
So, in the absence of Billings, depending on the form of those that aren't fixtures, I would think that our side for the opening CC match will look something like this:
A bit of a transformation in squads from this time last year too - we had just 19 registered players with no Billings and there were serious injury doubts about the three that ended up being released. We have 25 contracted players to date:
Bats Joe Denly Zac Crawley Daniel Bell-Drummond Jack Leaning Heino Kuhn Alex Blake (white ball only) Tawanda Muyeye Ben Compton
Bats/Keepers Sam Billings Ollie Robinson Jordan Cox
Seamers Darren Stevens Matt Milnes Harry Podmore Grant Stewart Tim Groenewald Nathan Gilchrist Fred Klaassen Matt Quinn Jaskaran Singh Matt Henry (second half of CC season) Jackson Bird (first six CC matches)
Spinners Imran Qayyum Hamidullah Qadri Marcus O'Riordan Qais Ahmad (T20 only) James Logan George Linde
Despite that 25, I suspect that, given that a dozen or so of them will be involved at some point in the Mickey Mouse effort, we will still need to sign players on short term contracts for the Royal London
I assume Joe Denly is ok and raring to go? Weren't there rumours last year about him having issues, and maybe retiring?
He's posting a lot on Instagram and there are no indications that he isn't up for it. That said, there is more competition for places and he will want to demonstrate better form than last year.
Got a couple of matches already in the Wooley upper tier.
We are now invited to purchase our seats for the home Blast games as a priority category following tickets purchased last season.
However, I find it difficult to look so far ahead & due to the fact we've never had a problem purchasing on a match by match basis, I'm assuming there shouldn't be any issues doing the same this time. It's not as though we sit in one of the priority areas or stands.
Got a couple of matches already in the Wooley upper tier.
We are now invited to purchase our seats for the home Blast games as a priority category following tickets purchased last season.
However, I find it difficult to look so far ahead & due to the fact we've never had a problem purchasing on a match by match basis, I'm assuming there shouldn't be any issues doing the same this time. It's not as though we sit in one of the priority areas or stands.
Thoughts, please .
Ditto
I struggle to get to Canterbury anyway, let alone deciding 4 months early! The stands at Canterbury are rubbish anyway, I prefer to sit outside near the Les Ames bar
Comments
The Royal London will compete with The Hundred once again - we will almost certainly lose Billings, DBD, Cox, Blake, Denly, Milnes, Klaassen, Qais Ahmad plus possibly Linde, Blake and Leaning. That is, potentially, a whole team. We are in a stronger position, squad wise, than last year but it will only take a couple of injuries and we will be scouring the local leagues for players. It does make the competition second rate - I wonder how Royal London feel about that. Equally, with the World Cup next year, how to prospective middle order batsmen stake a claim? Based on the half a dozen balls they hit in T20 at the end of an innings I assume.
One sensible change is that the T20 Blast final is in July, instead of being way after the group games had been played, in September
Stevo.......
It's definitely a problem that talented batsmen get "Charltonised" after a few Tests with England
Jas has been bowling OK with no opposition taking him apart but without taking loads of wickets. Due to Covid, the two day consecutive Saturday red ball matches have been converted to one day 50 over white ball games which doesn't suit him as much for obvious reasons.
Today Jas returned figures with the ball of 8-0-31-0 for Northern Districts against Kensington. It was with the bat that Jas proved to be the unlikely hero though. He came in at 9 with the score on 142-7 and his side still needing 80 off 11.3 overs to win. Jas hit one 4 and four 6's on his way to 54 not out off 38 balls with the winning maximum coming off the penultimate ball of the final over to win by two wickets. The second ball in this clip is the shot in question:
https://matchcentre.premier.saca.com.au/match/25-3752450/ballbyball?period=3745977&video=1267482
Jas might one day become a lower order all rounder because he has the ability and levers to do what he did today. Here's hoping that he does it for Kent in the not too distant future!
Will we take pity on them and leave Stevo out
https://www.kentcricket.co.uk/news/kent-to-face-sri-lanka-development-xi-at-the-spitfire-ground/
Looking forward to the second half of the season when we have Henry one end and Stevens the other. If we can score some runs too then there is no reason why we shouldn't do pretty well.
NZ made 482 in reply to SA's 95. Henry then took another wicket in SA's 2nd innings and SA were 4-3 at one point but recovered to 34-3 at close.
With 8-36 in the match to date and 58 not out with the bat, you won't be able to get a bet on who will be MOM!
SA mustered just 111 to go with their 95 in the 1st innings meaning that they lost by an innings and 276 runs. It really doesn't get much worse than that!
Crawley
Cox/Compton
Denly
Leaning
Bell-Drummond
Robinson
Linde
Stevens
Podmore/Gilchrist/Quinn/Stewart
Milnes
Bird
Bats
Joe Denly
Zac Crawley
Daniel Bell-Drummond
Jack Leaning
Heino Kuhn
Alex Blake (white ball only)
Tawanda Muyeye
Ben Compton
Bats/Keepers
Sam Billings
Ollie Robinson
Jordan Cox
Seamers
Darren Stevens
Matt Milnes
Harry Podmore
Grant Stewart
Tim Groenewald
Nathan Gilchrist
Fred Klaassen
Matt Quinn
Jaskaran Singh
Matt Henry (second half of CC season)
Jackson Bird (first six CC matches)
Spinners
Imran Qayyum
Hamidullah Qadri
Marcus O'Riordan
Qais Ahmad (T20 only)
James Logan
George Linde
Despite that 25, I suspect that, given that a dozen or so of them will be involved at some point in the Mickey Mouse effort, we will still need to sign players on short term contracts for the Royal London
Recommended stands to sit in?
Got a couple of matches already in the Wooley upper tier.
However, I find it difficult to look so far ahead & due to the fact we've never had a problem purchasing on a match by match basis, I'm assuming there shouldn't be any issues doing the same this time. It's not as though we sit in one of the priority areas or stands.
Thoughts, please .
I struggle to get to Canterbury anyway, let alone deciding 4 months early! The stands at Canterbury are rubbish anyway, I prefer to sit outside near the Les Ames bar