County Cricket: Middlesex v Derbyshire - Day 3

The great Willie Nelson wrote one of my favourite country songs of the 1960′s, Funny How Time Slips Away. Well, almost in the blink of an eye today, we lost a game in which, over two and a half days, we had more than held our own.

It was a cruel and salutory lesson for us. There was no mischief in the pitch, simply conditions more conducive to swing bowling that we were patently incapable of handling on this occasion. It was a collective bad day at the office that those involved will struggle to replicate if they play together for another ten years.

Let’s not get away from the fact that we were up against an attack of some talent. Finn is international class, Murtagh a very good county bowler and Roland-Jones is highly rated. Yet, we could and should have put up a better fight than was managed, with only Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Dan Redfern and Tom Poynton resisting for long after the skipper was dismissed.

Testing, early season pitches notwithstanding, Derbyshire’s batting has made an inauspicious start to the summer. As Karl Krikken points out on Cricinfo, we’ve made two half centuries in a collective 33 innings so far and it isn’t good enough. The opinion of the wider cricketing world at this time is that we can’t bat an eyelid, which is patently unfair and incorrect. There is enough talent in this side to make runs, but we need people to do that – and fast.

They will be hurting tonight, as Derbyshire fans are, but such things happen at cricket – and to better batting sides than ours. There’s some patently unfair comments, some directed at Shivnarine Chanderpaul, over on the Forum tonight. One correspondent suggests he should have scored more quickly when wickets were falling. In his defence, when five of his partners lasted seventeen balls between them, he’d have been hard pushed to do so. Given the resistance shown by the lower order thus far, he perhaps hoped that there might be similar support today. By the same token, we cannot rely on them to score the bulk of the runs on a regular basis.

There’s lots of talk about changing the order tonight, but the reality is that Wayne Madsen is opening because no one else likes doing so. It is an honourable act by an honourable man, even though I share the opinion of others that he would be at his best in the middle order.

It is nowhere near as easy as those suggesting that Whiteley should open, or Hughes, or Redfern. Opening the batting is a specialist skill and completely different from batting at five or six. A hard, red, shiny ball coming at you with a prominent seam focuses the mind and requires fast footwork, hand and eye co-ordination. Besides Billy Godleman, the only NATURAL openers on the staff are Ben Slater and Paul Borrington. Playing one of them means dropping a more established player from the middle order and Bozza isn’t fully fit after facial surgery, even if that was deemed an option.

Everyone needs to remember, as I’ve written ad nauseam pre-season, that this is a work in progress. For every day where we are impressed by the efforts of our youngsters, there will be others when they disappoint and frustrate. Whether people like it or not, it is part of a learning curve, part of growing up. How many of you out there have never had a bad day at the office, or in your work? Bet you’ve not had folks dissecting it in public though…

I’ll be honest, a lower middle-order with Ross Whiteley and David Wainwright in it suggests greater permanence when conditions favour bowlers. I think seven is too high for Jonathan Clare and Chesney’s forte isn’t a track where the ball moves around as it did in this match. Yet we did go with them and Clare bowled very well.

Indeed, when looking for reasons to be cheerful, our seam attack showed that it can take good wickets at this level. They all bowled well, even if Tony Palladino was more expensive than usual. Mark Turner seems a much improved bowler, Tim Groenewald is always a threat and Clare hits the deck hard and works up good pace.

Give them something to bowl at and results can be different. There’s a lot of work to do, but don’t get on their backs after one defeat guys.

We’re all disappointed tonight, but there’s no reason to be daft.