v Worcestershire CC2 @ Taunton Wednesday 7 June 2006

Scorecard

With a rested seam attack and a win against the Worcester lot already this season, we ought to be confident going into this one.  But.  Greame Hick is here for probably the last time and always, in the back of a Somerset supporters mind is the fact that he loves the place - and so does his bat.  We expect Caddick and Charl to do him twic for not a lot and take away that nasty taste of pear that has been in the mouth of SCCC supporters for far too long.

A confident captain should be relishing this one after the two day win in Swansea and his own personal work in the one dayer on the weekend.  He'll pick from the usual suspects one would assume and the only probable place where there might be an alteration is the decision over Richard Johnson or Dan Cullen

Therefore we should expect;

Wood, Suppiah, Durston, Parsons, White, Hildreth, Trego, Gazzard, Cullen/Johnson, Caddick, Willoughby

to be the starting line-up.  Anything else would be a surprise really.  The only question is in what order the batsmen will appear.  Again, personally I'd like to see Durston or Parsons in first change with White coming in further down the order and murdering the non shiny ball.  Hildreth needs some runs but is not benefitting from coming in early.  Peter Trego will keep his place because of his excellent support of the frontline last week and Johnson will be unlucky to miss out after a sterling performance in the same game.  However, we need to keep him as fit as possible because we have strengthened the batting but the second stream bowling still had a couple of question marks over it in Wales so resting him and getting the most out of Cullen while he is here seems sensible.

It will all kick off tomorrow and we will see whether the week in Wales has done the job for the county.

Day 1

You know, there must be days when a bowler has put down less than 20 balls and knows it is going to be a LOOOOOOOOONNNNGGG day!  Even from the early morning scorecard it seemed certain that the thing to do on this wicket was to win the toss and BAT!  WWorcestershire won the toss and batted.  And that was about the stroy of Day 1 really, they batted and batted and batted and except for a slight spell of wickets around the lunch period that is what they did for the day.  Caddick and the medium pacers wheeled away manfully while Willoughby caused a bit of a ruckus in the 120's by having Moore caught behind 3 runs after his half ton and then, soon after, getting Solanki to flip one to Wes for 5 - a real disaster this because no other batsmen scored less than 50! Charl took his third at 170 skittling Jacques after a solid 88.

But then we had Hick and Smith.  If only GH could have played his whole England career on the Taunton wicket.  He would have been the greatest Test batsment ever with buckets of runs.  Cameron tried spin, Cullen bowled tight spells but no wickets and White bowled himself early to keep the score sensible.  Unfortunately the later Worcestershire batsmen took a bit of a shine to Arul and Wes so we had to revert back to seam.  Keith Parsons was underbowled having only three tours at the wicket for 7 - injury?  It seemed a little strange for him to go for so few and not have another spell.

But it was a hot flat day with batsmen wearing their football glasses.  When I got to the ground in the later stages of the afternoon everyone was waiting for the end of the day.  Smith was over 100 and going for 150, Hich was over 150 and going who knows where.  It is more of the same weatherwise in Bicknoller this morning, the opposition have 444 for 3 (quadruple Nelson - maybe they'll collapse) and will declare sometime early afternoon with 600-ish up.  Then we'll have to bat once to pass the follow on and probably not again as the draw arrives.....OR our own pitch will develop mines and we'll be batting for our lives once again in the end of week sun.  I'm not puttiing bets on which scenario I'll be reporting on tonight.

This is just one of those games where the toss decides the game...they happen.  Let's get the batting points and take the draw!

"HoopyT" reports on the highlights of Day 2

I was there today and here are a few things I can remember:

Caddy looked very out of sorts bowling this morning and didn't get too many overs. I couldn't really tell the reason for this.

Willoughby was very good once he switched to the old pav end. Richly deserved his wickets although Hicky didn't seem too pleased with one of them, good catch by Gazzard who looked good behind the stumps today.

Cullen had a decent bowl, it was the first time I'd seen him and he did ok. He came on and immediatley was bowling around the wicket to a right hander with a 2-7 field, only a cover and a mid-on. Very strange I thought.

Pars again did well with the ball, was tight and got rid of the tail. Brilliant catch by Suppiah for the last wicket. Nice to see Kabir hasn't grown up and still threw his toys from the pram when he was bowled.

On to the batting:

Wood looked in good touch and then got out as is often the case unfortunately. Bizzare dissmissal too, Zaheer bowling over the wicket and somehow clipped his leg stump behind his legs. A poor way to get out really

Suppiah got a bit tied down and had a bit of an ugly swipe outside off stump and nicked it. Unlike him.

Hildreth started slowly and looked like he wasn't timing it well at all (the outfield was slow too) but was grafting and getting into his stride when he waved one by and then edged the next one to gully, not a good shot.

Wes did pretty well played and missed a few times but looked ok, we need a big one tomorrow. Whitey survived a couple of very big LBW shouts and a couple of egdes not going to hand but looked in prime form when driving though the off-side. Two absolute beauties off Sillence.

Thanks for the insights Sir! 

Excellent service from Charl Willoughby today.  I doubt he's worked harder for a 6-fer.  6 for 104 off 32 overs was a sterling effort when little else was happening.  It's good to see that KP bowled again today...and effectively with 3 for 33 of the 10 (actually that was 3 for 24 off 7 for today).  Both Caddy and Trigger got some tap over the last couple of days and the spinners wheeled in and did what they could.

The batting was a bit less impressive as Wood went early and Suppiah didn't seem to get going.  I cannot for the life of me understand the James Hildreth at 4 theory.  He's not in stunning form, he's not a particularly patient starter (although he has been trying to be better in the last few games) and you have people far better suited to setting up a big innings base (a certain Parsons comes to mind).  So he almost got in before he got out but he didn't stay around.

We need 468 to save the follow on - batting for the next four sessions would be a good way to move towards that!  Wes Durston and Cameron White need to emulate Hick and Smith and their 330 run partnership.  Well played WD today, you are really looking for one of those top five slots aren't ya?  A draw is still the best we can hope for - it should be the least we ought to achieve.

Day 3

It is difficult to know what to say at games like these. 

The forum is full of doom, gloom, talk of P45's and plans for next season.  We aren't at Bath yet and everything is perceived to be over. 

It isn't surprising when we seem incapable of hitting a winning total on the pitch we should know well or taking wickets on our home turf while players with no records at all (no disrespect to Mr Sillence's perfromance intended) take career best's.  On the third day the pitch takes spin and we look even more out of our depth.  We will go into Day 4 looking down the barrell of an innings defeat with the only objective really being that Caddick and Cullen's rearguard action continues and they have to bat again.

It wasn't all bad.  A steadfast 89 by Wes Durston cemented further his place in the batting line-up and second consecutive century from captain Cameron made our first innings score respectable (except against the 618 we allowed Worcestershire to score).  However, except for a mid 30's score from James Hildreth we could only rustle up an extra 45 for the loss of 6 wickets to the medium pace of Sillence!  This pitch hadn't changed condition, there was no alteration in the weather, it hadn't deteriorated.  So why couldn't we bat on it?  Lots of debate about that in threads on the forum if you want to know what the consensus is.

So we managed to move from a draw score of 199 for 3 at the end of Day 2 to 346 all out on the third - I make that 147 for 7 on a flat batting strip we train on.

And back come the openers for a second go because we fell a mere 123 runs short of the follow on.  By the time we got within two runs of that score, we were 5 down as the pitch started to take spin and Batty had a field day.  On a day when the only word that should have been coming out of players and coaches mouths on the Somerset balcony was 'occupation', why was anybody trying to hit anything at all that wasn't on the wicket and everything there should have been shown the straight bat?  Batty is not Murali and Taunton is not some Indian sub-tropical 'burner'.  What the hell were we playing at?  It certainly didn't look like sensible, 'to the conditions and the state of the match' cricket.

Matt didn't seem to get in.  Arul occuppied but couldn't get into his stride at all (4 off 65 balls in 79 minutes).  Wes did another job with 40 but didn't kick on.  James is still in poor form and Whitey was bowled by his third delivery.  By that time it was well and truly over.  The fact that Parsons and Trego put on a few (a half ton in Trigger's case) didn't mean as much as it should have because of the capitulation of the top order.  The first ball skittling of Gazzard was hardly met with a groan and only the stuborness of Caddick, hitting into the 40's in a boundary fest of one day straight stuff (43 off 34 in half an hour of 7 fours and 1 six) brought any joy to the crowd - while showing up the earlier batting fiasco something rotten!

Andy is still there (Whoops Andy was still there but he's gone now) and Dan was on 0.  We've passed 260  but there's one wicket left.  This game will end before mid-day and we can only hope we pass 272 before we finally give up the ghost.

We are going to lose this game by an innings or 10 wickets in just over three days, at home on a pitch that should have been any professional batsman's dream strip. 

What does that say about our present position as a first class side and our future in a 2006 of hot summer days? 

On to the sun and joys of the Bath Festival and the hope that Elton's weight and the 20K people here next week do something drastic to this bit of grass in deepest darkest Somerset. Not sure how we are going to solve the problem of not being able to bat though.  Maybe the Langer Factor will change things and we can all bellieve that we've solved a problem that has plagued us for what seems like ages. 

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon