Kent under GrahamB (v12.24)

[GrahamB]

Next up is a Three Day match against the visiting South Africans.
We've looked upon this as an opportunity to rest many of our key players, in order to let the youngsters and fringe players have an opportunity to impress.
Of course, this could end in a massacre, but so be it!

[GrahamB]

KENT v SOUTH AFRICA (Three Day Match)

The highlights of our first innings were half centuries to reserve keeper Sam Billings and debutante Dominic Cole.
Could Cole have a bright future after all? Time will tell, but signs are promising.

The pitch was very benign and our young pacemen all struggled to pose problems for the South African top order.
Amla scored a fine unbeaten 132.

The visitors made an unexpected declaration, hoping to bowl us out quickly and cheaply.
However, the much heralded South African pace attack found it just as difficult to get any penetration and it was a bonus for us that Masakadza was able to play himself into form with an unbeaten century.

We made a token declaration at tea to give our bowlers a further session of practice, but the result had been a foregone conclusion for a while.
An honourable draw for our understrength side.

[KGKOOLKAT777]

My NZ team can't beat SA so well done on managing a draw

[DaveK93]

Nice result against South Africa, impressive! What areas of the team are you looking at improving given the chance?

[GrahamB]

Nice result against South Africa, impressive! What areas of the team are you looking at improving given the chance?

We don't seem to be too bad in the batting, but our bowling definitely lacks penetration, with only Davies and Tredwell providing wickets on a regular basis (perhaps Mahmood too now that he is available).

My other concern is that many of our top players are nearing retirement (Powell, Stevens, Jones, Mahmood and Cook in particular), so unless some of our young players step up to the plate, we could be in trouble. We don't seem to have many decent players in the 24-30 age bracket.

Should be an interesting challenge over the next few seasons if I can keep things going.

[GrahamB]

The team line ups for our next match, a Challenge Trophy battle against visiting Sussex.

[GrahamB]

KENT v SUSSEX (Challenge Trophy)

This was a particularly cruel result.

We'd bowled well to keep a stranglehold on the visitors when they batted, until Legge launched a late assault on Mahmood to get them up to 198/7.

We paced our batting well and looked certain to clinch victory, but a couple of superb Panesar overs at the death saw us needing 14 runs off the final over.
We needed three runs to win off the final ball, but could only manage a single.



Of the pace at present, but signs are promising I think.

[GrahamB]

News

England completed a 5-0 sweep in the ODIs against the visiting Aussies!

[GrahamB]

Back to the County Championship now with a home match against Glamorgan.
Dominic Cole will play his first County Championship match for us, having played against both the West Indies and then in the Challenge Trophy match against Sussex.

[DaveK93]

We don't seem to be too bad in the batting, but our bowling definitely lacks penetration, with only Davies and Tredwell providing wickets on a regular basis (perhaps Mahmood too now that he is available).

My other concern is that many of our top batsmen are nearing retirement (Powell, Stevens, Jones, Mahmood and Cook in particular), so unless some of our young players step up to the plate, we could be in trouble. We don't seem to have many decent players in the 24-30 age bracket.

Should be an interesting challenge over the next few seasons if I can keep things going.

You seem to be in the same situation as I have with Nottinghamshire then, I lose Broad and Swann to England, but the back up bowlers are getting on and lack penetration. I've resorted to bring in the younger players, because I'm struggling to get wickets otherwise. Same with the batting though, I've got an impressive line up. Kent aren't doing that well in mine though, 7th in the CC Div 2, but are second in their one day group. Out the T20 comfortably though.

[GrahamB]

You seem to be in the same situation as I have with Nottinghamshire then, I lose Broad and Swann to England, but the back up bowlers are getting on and lack penetration. I've resorted to bring in the younger players, because I'm struggling to get wickets otherwise. Same with the batting though, I've got an impressive line up. Kent aren't doing that well in mine though, 7th in the CC Div 2, but are second in their one day group. Out the T20 comfortably though.

Bowling certainly seems to be harder than batting in my opinion.
And yes, I think that the way to go is to coach and bring through the most promising youngsters.
I'm hoping I'll improve Kent's position in the Challenge Trophy.

[benhubbs]

Something I found strange: Alex Blake is batting at the top of the order for Warwickshire like 5 years on! He even had a 55+ FC Batting Average one year, maybe he's got some hidden potential... The majority of the beginning squad though has basically been lost due to teams not picking them up in the close season, barring Tredwell, Davies (still with me) & Coles.

[GrahamB]

Something I found strange: Alex Blake is batting at the top of the order for Warwickshire like 5 years on! He even had a 55+ FC Batting Average one year, maybe he's got some hidden potential... The majority of the beginning squad though has basically been lost due to teams not picking them up in the close season, barring Tredwell, Davies (still with me) & Coles.

Alex Blake - that doesn't surprise me. He's done okay in the longer form of the game and in One Dayers, but seems pretty useless in T20s.

[GrahamB]

KENT v GLAMORGAN (County Championship D2)

Our groundsman prepared an absolute featherbed!

Naylor and Powell scored unbeaten centuries, while Masakadza and Key both scored half centuries, as we romped through to 450/3 declared.

Glamorgan found things just as comfortable when they batted, with Rees and Allenby scoring centuries too.
Not much good for the confidence or averages of our bowlers unfortunately, although Simon Cook did pick up 3/99.

A token declaration allowed us further batting practice, so we re-arranged our batting order to give some of the middle order batsmen a turn as we saw time out.



Still looking for our first win.

[GrahamB]

Off to Hampshire for another County Championship match.

Tredwell comes back into the side because turn is expected on the wicket being used. Tredwell and Masakadza could prove to be a useful partnership.
Geraint Jones takes back the keeping duties from Billings. The youngster proved to be useful with the gloves, but Jones offers more strength with his batting. Hopefully he'll produce more in that area after his short spell playing for the second team.