Yorkshire v Derbyshire Day 4 - Not a good time to be a Derbyshire fan

I always try to accentuate the positives and to look for encouraging signs in our team, but that is very hard to do after a last day performance that must go down as an absolute shambolic display.

The only conclusion to come to, after a final afternoon capitulation against nothing better than an average division one attack, is that this is going to be a very hard championship season in which we need to look more at damage limitation and respectability than anything more ambitious.

When you lose so horribly against a side that was promoted with you last summer, it is hard to see anything other than relegation ahead. It hurts to say it, but there should have been no way, after one of your players scores 270, then the opposition make nearly 700, that we should have been bowled out today.

Three wickets gone at lunch suggested travails ahead, especially when one was our star overseas player who didn’t have the best of games. Yet, Wayne Madsen and Wes Durston took us to 139-3 before an appalling slide saw the last seven wickets go for just 24 runs in fourteen overs. It was the sort of thing I’ve seen a few times too many at club level, but by any standards that was poor at county level.

I’ll give credit to Yorkshire‘s bowlers for putting the ball in the right areas, but I’d rank this as worse than Lord’s as a loss, because it really shouldn’t have happened. I’m happy to absolve Chesney Hughes and Wayne Madsen of blame, because they did their bit in the match. Durston got a few runs in the second innings too, but if you take those innings out of the equation, we scored 140 runs from 18 knocks in the match.

Where do we go from here? We keep fighting. There is an argument for bringing in Richard Johnson behind the stumps, but unless you’re going to bring in Ben Slater, Paul Borrington or Peter Burgoyne, there’s no batting options, with Ross Whiteley out of form.

What we are doing as a club is absolutely the right thing for the long term. I still feel that we will be a good side in the medium to long term and some of these lads will become part of a very good Derbyshire side.

As long as we learn harsh lessons from this sort of display.

Because tonight is not a very good night to be a Derbyshire fan.