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1st XI Thoughts on 2010

  
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Friday, October 01 2010 @ 02:12 AM BST
Contributed by: dburke
Views: 795
I have had a month to recover from my slip fielding experiences versus Paignton and at least two months to get over seeing Angry try to catch a lollipop on his knee at Sidmouth so I thought I would jot down some of my thoughts from the summer. Any comments are welcome....unless of course you have a 'proper bowling action' but still sometimes strap the keepers pads on at the drinks interval...

Hopefully the captain won’t be too upset if I say that the person most surprised that we finished third was myself. However, I was also probably the person most happy! In honesty we didn’t have the depth to challenge for the title, there were a couple of very good sides ahead of us (and behind us come to that!), but a common trend seems to be that we have improved each year since 2004 (barring 2009 which was interspersed with freak illnesses, injuries, unavailability’s, Saturday afternoon trips to Barometer World and the occasional complete lack of a bowling attack). Another trend seems to be that we find life easier against stronger batting sides than we do against stronger bowling sides. We also seem to become more competitive on the better pitches. Whatever the outcome – we do very well for a side with a playing budget more akin to a C Division club.

I think that the key difference this year was an extra 40-50 runs in nearly every game we played. Every single player in the top five can claim some of the credit for that, and also the fact that the runs were scored more quickly than in previous seasons. Numbers one to five can all claim to have played match winning innings during the season and that is a real positive. The upshot of this was that Badger, and latterly Psycho, had a few runs to bowl their very different brands of off-spin at, and instantly became more effective as bowlers.

Oddly, the bottom 5, who have winkled out so many points with the bat over the last few years had a very poor season with the bat – and several times we fell away badly when looking likely to score 250-260 plus. I suspect that the former captain Minett nailed the reason for this one week when he commented that we try to go too hard, too early.

The extra runs gave us defendable targets (7 winning draws!) and believe it or not we scored the third most runs and gained the third highest batting points in the league. A remarkable achievement considering what Budleigh had to say about playing on our square. They weren’t so quick to sound off when they bowled Plympton out for 60 a fortnight later.

In truth the decent quality of the square helped our cricket. We all know that it wasn’t perfect (one look at Fridge’s face after the Sidmouth game told us that), but it was only fifteen months old after all. I think by next year we will have a seriously good facility on our hands and that can only be good for the club and development of players.

On the down side our cup form was diabolical and we managed to lose in the county final of the T20 – not really anyone’s fault – just a day long struggle with the bat.

There were some massive plus points in 2010. In my opinion the biggest plus is that the second team came fourth in their premier league with one player over 21 and a bowling attack aged 16, 16, 17 and 19. The other highlights were the performances of George Stephenson (who needs no introduction here!) and, more surprisingly, Ben Robins. Beadle played the last four games, took a few poles, made several people hop around and clanged two very high quality players in the grill. Whatever happens when he is bowling it is never dull.

We have a great core of players at Plymouth, and every year we get better. If we get a bit more game savvy next season, availability remains good and the batsman continue to perform I am sure we can again finish in the top half!

See you at the AGM
 
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