Middlesex vs Derbyshire: Day 1 review

It is very easy, as some people were doing on Cricinfo and Twitter today, to make fun of Billy Godleman’s 50 from 244 balls today. ‘Son of Boycott’, ‘Yorkshire Digger’ and a few others were doing the rounds as the day progressed.

Yet, one has also to admire the monumental levels of concentration that went into that knock. By all accounts, it is far from a straightforward track, on the edge of the square and offering help to the seamers. Yet Billy battled away all day and without him we would have been in dire straits.

He perished just before the close for 55, but aside from a solid effort from Wes Durston and valuable support from Tom Poynton, we didn’t come to terms with the wicket. As I’ve written before though, never judge a match situation until both sides have batted…

Billy does need to take some responsibility for a role in two run outs, of Wayne Madsen and Tony Palladino. We cannot afford to be so profligate with our wickets as that at this level and that’s now three bad run outs (following that of Ross Whiteley at Edgbaston) in two matches. It is, to be fair, hard to defend that happening, especially twice in an innings, in four-day cricket.

Whiteley was omitted today, with Jonathan Clare coming into the side. That gave us four quality seamers and Hughes was presumably retained to offer the spin balance with Wes Durston. The issue that gives us as a side is that neither Chesney nor Jon are great starters. On a bowler’s track that can often see an innings slide, as happened today. David Wainwright’s grit might have been useful in that middle order, but at the end of the day you can only fit eleven in a team and something has to give.

As I wrote last night, the wicket is green and bowlers have considerable help. It is now down to our seam attack to see what they can make of it. With the weather forecast favourable, this game will provide a positive result, one way or another.

We need to see some of that Derbyshire fighting spirit tomorrow, exemplified again late in the day with Tim Groenewald and Mark Turner’s last wicket stand that took us to a batting point and closing score of 205-9. When ten and eleven in your side both average 20 in first-class cricket, they’re not really tail-enders, despite what you may hear on the radio…

In closing tonight, an observation regarding Samit Patel‘s 256 against Durham MCCU. Over on Cricinfo, there was considerable excitement at him scoring 300 in a day. In the end he didn’t, and I have two comments on that:

a) Why get excited about 256 against somewhat limited opposition?

and

b) Based on their batting against Middlesex last week, aren’t there a few of their other batsmen who could have used a knock? Surely he was in form once he’d made a hundred?

Fair play, 250 is good going, but perhaps somewhat akin to me taking my bat down to the local primary school for a knock tomorrow in comparative terms.

Adieu for now. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.