T20: Gloucestershire 166 v Kent 167 - 2.
Gloucestershire's lack of strike bowling in this format of the game was yet again exposed last night as Kent made chasing 167 look incredibly easy thanks to the efforts of Azhar Mahmood, who is still only 36, despite the fact that the Jessop Tavern View is old enough to remember him as a Pakistani veteran in the mid 1990's!
166 was no where near the imposing total it should have been as the boys reached 121 for 2, with solid contributions from the entire top order. 5 wickets in 7 balls from occasional baseball pitcher Wahab Riaz turned the game Kent's way, and Mahmood's explosive hundred saw them hope comfortably.
That's about all there is to say.
We'll admit that, here at the Jessop Tavern View, we are finding it hard to be motivated by the T20. Naturally the situation is not exactly helped by how crap we are, but we are crap in pretty much all formats of the game so this is hardly a novel experience for a Gloucestershire fan. It is mainly that such a shortened format of the game takes away the intrigue; the painstaking analysis of why people are shit. It provides players with what must be a welcome respite from criticism. Why did Gloucestershire crumble from 121 for 2 to 166 all out? Well, they were chasing quick runs at the end of the innings. Sometimes the wild slogging and suicidal running comes off. Sometimes it doesn't. There is not a lot else to write about. Why did Kent only lose 2 wickets? Well, two guys had their eye in and today was there day. On another day it would have been different. We know that there is more than this to good quality T20 cricket. It's just that often it is hard to be bothered to analyse things to deeply.
The boys have one more T20 game before the bizarre return of the championship, for one game, on Sunday. Can anybody out there explain why there is a single round of championship fixtures in the middle of the T20 competition. Is it deliberately aimed at confusing fans? Why oh why could this round not just wait until the T20 has finished?
Gloucestershire's lack of strike bowling in this format of the game was yet again exposed last night as Kent made chasing 167 look incredibly easy thanks to the efforts of Azhar Mahmood, who is still only 36, despite the fact that the Jessop Tavern View is old enough to remember him as a Pakistani veteran in the mid 1990's!
166 was no where near the imposing total it should have been as the boys reached 121 for 2, with solid contributions from the entire top order. 5 wickets in 7 balls from occasional baseball pitcher Wahab Riaz turned the game Kent's way, and Mahmood's explosive hundred saw them hope comfortably.
That's about all there is to say.
We'll admit that, here at the Jessop Tavern View, we are finding it hard to be motivated by the T20. Naturally the situation is not exactly helped by how crap we are, but we are crap in pretty much all formats of the game so this is hardly a novel experience for a Gloucestershire fan. It is mainly that such a shortened format of the game takes away the intrigue; the painstaking analysis of why people are shit. It provides players with what must be a welcome respite from criticism. Why did Gloucestershire crumble from 121 for 2 to 166 all out? Well, they were chasing quick runs at the end of the innings. Sometimes the wild slogging and suicidal running comes off. Sometimes it doesn't. There is not a lot else to write about. Why did Kent only lose 2 wickets? Well, two guys had their eye in and today was there day. On another day it would have been different. We know that there is more than this to good quality T20 cricket. It's just that often it is hard to be bothered to analyse things to deeply.
The boys have one more T20 game before the bizarre return of the championship, for one game, on Sunday. Can anybody out there explain why there is a single round of championship fixtures in the middle of the T20 competition. Is it deliberately aimed at confusing fans? Why oh why could this round not just wait until the T20 has finished?
No comments:
Post a Comment