T20 v Hampshire 26th May 2023

[Paul W]

Presumably same squad of 14 (although no announcement yet).

Martin Andersson must be a bit of a doubt, after apparently dislocating his little finger. It didn't affect his bowling, but he did look in a bit of discomfort in his (very short) innings.

After this match maybe we should just have one T20 thread for the remaining group games, as we now have fewer posters, and posts per match.

Any strong views either way?

[adelaide]

Presumably same squad of 14 (although no announcement yet).

Martin Andersson must be a bit of a doubt, after apparently dislocating his little finger. It didn't affect his bowling, but he did look in a bit of discomfort in his (very short) innings.

After this match maybe we should just have one T20 thread for the remaining group games, as we now have fewer posters, and posts per match.

Any strong views either way?

Asw long as we have a separate thread for the knockout stages...

[John Assirati]

Asw long as we have a separate thread for the knockout stages...

and the Final

[Paul W]

161-4 becomes 171 all out.

Not sure how many runs we made in the last four overs, but it wasn't many.

As per normal, we fell away badly.

[Jonathan Winsky]

Despite the stream being on my TV, I haven’t concentrated on this match, as I was writing about last night’s match v Surrey at Lord’s.

By Middlesex's standards, 171 feels like a great score. The icing on the cake would have been had our players made more double-figure scores to cause Stevie Eskinazi, Pieter Malan and Ryan Higgins’ scores to not stick out on the scorecard so prominently. We will have to see whether our score will be under-par, more than enough, or somewhere in between.

My scorecard view suggests that had I paid more attention to the match, my sights would have been set on a score far higher than 171 when we were 141-3 after 15.1 overs. I would have probably hoped for closer to 60 runs from that stage than to the 30 we added.

At least Hampshire are doing a stream for their matches which is available free of charge on YouTube. I have heard that Kent have launched their own platform, for which people will have to pay, and which will presumably not be available on YouTube, which I would have thought would mean that it not be possible for anyone to get the stream on their TV unless they connect it to their computer, which is not good for people who like to watch matches together without having to gather around a computer.

[Jonathan Winsky]

I approached Middlesex’s Twenty20 campaign fearful that it would be difficult and not something which would provide me with much cricketing joy. Two matches, it seems that I have little cause to consider myself to have been unduly pessimistic.

For the second evening running, we are left wondering what would have happened had our middle- and lower-order been able to build on the platform our top-order provided. We would certainly have ended up with more runs on the board, although I am not sure whether it would have been enough to win either match.

[Paul W]

Kevan James has just said, 'You can't lose two matches in a row and not make any changes for the next game'.

I wouldn't bet on it Kev!

And you know it's bad when Kevin Hand is conceding defeat with more than ten overs to go. Even he couldn't summon up the energy to come up with optimistic scenarios of how we might somehow cause an upset.

The players looked as beaten and as demoralised as the supporters.

It's going to be a long few weeks.....

[Paul W]

A friend has asked me to point out Nathan Sowter took 5-15 for Durham tonight, as they thrashed Notts.

:cool:

[adelaide]

A friend has asked me to point out Nathan Sowter took 5-15 for Durham tonight, as they thrashed Notts.

:cool:

Not a friend who doesn't like the Napoleonic yard, by any chance? But yes, I did notice that earlier. Best way of keeping the score down is to keep taking wickets.

[Peter H]

For the second evening running, we are left wondering what would have happened had our middle- and lower-order been able to build on the platform our top-order provided. We would certainly have ended up with more runs on the board, although I am not sure whether it would have been enough to win either match.

That is a valid point. The batting has to improve: we've given away 25% of our wickets to balls aimed at the stumps (bowled and lbw) and three of those 20 wickets have been run outs which I personally would ascribe to a lack of concentration.

Preventing the opposition from scoring runs would certainly help. Some of our bowling has been far too ill-disciplined for my liking: 9 wides and 4 no-balls across two matches is 17 runs our batters have struggled to retrieve.