Re: A Trent Bridge too far as Middlesex tied up in kNotts
adelaide
09 September, 2019 10:43
Quote:BREARS
Glad Im not the only one who thinks Murts should have played last night, the tall bowlers are very hittable, wouldnt have lost anything in the field ither, he may have caught one.
Looking at the whole campaign, the over reliance of the top 6 was always risky and if it wasnt for Morgans wonder knock last week, we would have failed to qualify and would have been spared last nights humilation.
If Murts had played and put himself out of the CC by straining something in the field (which at his age in a T20 is quite likely) we would all have been asking why on earth he had been brought in! On balance I'm quite glad he didn't play.
Three of the four matches were won easily, including Sussex's match. The only qualifier from the south is Essex, who only just scraped in and were a worse side than both Sussex and Glos, in my opinion. T20 generates flukish results sometimes, and also very one-sided encounters to counterbalance the last ball finishes. Best to look at the whole campaign rather than individual matches and I suppose the conclusion has to be that we were just about where we deserved to be, or perhaps slightly overachieving. The thing that stands out to me is how all the seamers got tonked at several stages and seemed to find it difficult to vary what they were doing to outthink the batsmen. Helm is supposed to the best of the three at that but it seemed to slip away from him as the campaign wore on. They must have practised all this but it didn't seem to be evident in action. Having said that, even a well executed and thought out over can go for 20 if the batsman guesses right.
The deterioration in the fielding as the campaign worse on was also quite striking. Surrey supporters noted how much sharper Middlesex seemed against them in the field (and probably everything, some to think about it) but by the end people seemed to be expecting to drop catches.
Adelaide