v Derbyshire CC2 @ Derby Tuesday 8 August 2006

Scorecard

In serious danger of imploding completely, the Somerset season trundles on with the hope that the squad can put together an effective performance in one form of the game on which to build some kind of revival of fortunes.  We arrive in Derby with the hope that this may be the place to put our long game back together.  The selectors generally keep faith and the only real change is the replacement of the spin of Munday with the pace of Simon Francis.  We choose the battle ground and possibly because of the conditions, insert them for first go with the bat. We have to believe that it wasn't through fear of what might happen to our batters if we were put in on a pitch with ambiguous weather reports.

Day 1 and 2

And we compete well. Derbyshire get off to a decent start and go well through to the late one hundreds. But we pull them back and from 167 for 3 we chip away to finish them off with only 316 up.  Besides the expected work of Charl Willoughby, there is a good return from the captain but the younger pacemen are on the expensive side.  But it is a competitive score and we can work with that as a first innings target.

But...it goes wrong almost immediately as the good work is undone by the Derby bowlers getting among our front end.  Wood doesn't build, Gazzard(?) in at 3 (please explain this one to me) and totally out of position, is back before 50 is up.  We lose wickets around Edwards like they are going out of style with the last 5 going down for 20 to raise the bar to a massive 151!!  Neil Edwards is the only one with any kind of credit making 75 before he went at number 8.  What can you say about the rest? Well two others got into double figures and we did give Steffan Jones 4 for 45 in the process.

We are therefore over 150 behind with quite a bit of the game to go and Derbyshire must be over the moon.  That 'lunar' feeling must have continued as we then fail to hold them and when De Venuto goes for 118 off 150 balls at 201 for 3 we are well behind this game and Day 2 isn't over yet.  Si Francis must sum up how the guys must be feeling when absolutely nothing is going right and summoning up enough motivation to play this sodding game is a battle in itself!  2 overs for 32 when trying to tighten a screw on a rampant opposition.

There was some fight and the bowlers did re-assert some control towards the end of the day as Derbyshire 'slumped' from 201 to 277 for 6 as Caddick and Trego took some scalps.  But we are 442 runs behind and they have 4 wickets in hand and 2 days to get us out. I don't know what the odds are on a Somerset survival but it isn't probable....but it is still possible and we'll be watching tomorrow for some glimmers of pride and hope in the inevitable second innings that will start sometime around lunchtime tomorrow.  Keep the faith boys and girls but get the prayer mats out at the same time because they'll need every ounce of belief that we can still muster.

Day 3 and 4

An achievement on the usual terms would ave been to at least take them into a fourth day.  It has come to something when that is the best we can expect.  However there were indications of a change in the tide for the boys from the South West.  Admittedly against a side that hasn't won a home fixture in the Championship in four years, we did show something of a revival in fortunes - however small that was.

Derbyshire finally succumbed for 416 declaring on day 3 with enough time to have a go at us either side of lunch and then take 5 sessions to remove us..not a problem the first time around.  The bowlers stuck to a difficult task although Si Francis took some hammer (44 off 3 was is contribution to the second attack). 2 wickets for each of Caddick, Willoughby and Trego with the spinners Durston and Suppiah getting one each before the home side called it a day. 

729 to pass ad 151 in the bank when we start phase 2 leaves us with 579 to get to win!!  The highest winning margin in a fourth innings ever I think.  But we could draw if we could hold out and show some fight.  Losing Edwards - run out for heaven's sake - and Wood before we had passed 12 did not make a succesful result look likely!

It didn't look any more likely when James Hildreth turned another decent start into nothing at 75 followed by Arul at 90. We seemed to be moving towards a loss in the realms of 250 runs or more in 3 days once again.  But we had counted without Wes Durston and his determination to stay with his skipper who had been settling at the other end while the usual semi-mayem was taking place. Together they put on 213 for the 5th wicket with White taking the lions share ut nly thanks to the vital 'stickyness' (73) of Wes.  At 303 for 5, a win as not on but a better loss was in the offing and a fourth day perhaps.

Unfortunately, Trego and Gazzard could't maitain the 'stickyness' as they both went cheaply and it was left to Frank Senior to help is captain take himself towards 200 and Somerset int Day 4.  If only one of those ther batsmen could have provided a score, we may well have been going into the last day with a real chance of puling it off.  White was on 197 with his bowler on 16. We needed 179 to win and had a whole day to get it.  Not enough wickets though!

And so it proved. Franks resistence ended with a very valuable 38 and although the Mighty Victorian tore into the Derbyshire attack and murdered another session, the tail just couldn't stick around long enough. White finished with an unbeaten 260 and we fell just 80 runs short of a real memorable victory at 498.

Not good enough but we went down fighting.  It isn't against the strongest side in the world but we went down fighting and that has to be a positive.  Appalling batting in the first innings where two adequate performances from anyone to support Edwards would have given us this game but we did not bow to the inevitable and came out of the game with some credit...albeit a marginal amount.

Let's see if the backbone is growing and we can produce a final fighting month to at least go into the winter with some optimism.

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