Coach’s Corner – Farby’s Blog – 7 June

Well this week has been a mixed week, a very nice win against Leicestershire which I covered in last weeks blog, two new overseas players and two defeats in the T20.

The last two weeks of championship cricket have been pretty decent and I thought our batsman all looked in pretty good touch and started to find some good form. We now have a couple of weeks before we pay at Lords in the next championship game. The pitch at T Wells was very good, and although perhaps it lacked a little pace, it was a pretty good cricket pitch. The ground staff did an excellent job and the pitch contributed to a good four days. It was a shame that the game started on a Sunday, it perhaps put a few people off from coming. It is not easy following county cricket these days with matches starting on different days of the week all the time.

Onto the T20 and a disappointing start to the competition for us. Somerset and Hampshire are both good sides, but in this competition you feel you can beat anybody and I really think we have a decent side with everybody fit. The two overseas players will really make us a good side on paper, but matches are not won on paper and we will need to play better than we did on Friday. We had an excellent chat on Sunday before the 5 over slog, and we identified key areas to work on and keep making progress in.

We started a little rusty on Friday and also saw an amazing innings from the South African van de Merwe, he played a fantastic innings, although we didn’t quite get our lengths right to him and allowed him to free his hands, and did he free them!! He made Trescothick look quite pedestrian with the way he played.

Sundays 5 over slog was very frustrating in many ways, it was always a gamble to play such a game. It was a shame for the large crowd that it came down to such a game. The ground staff did all they could, but the rain made it very difficult. On a playing front, we started well with two high quality overs up front, then the next two caused serious damage. It was a tough learning experience for Adam Ball, but one that will make him a better bowler. As for our innings, Stevo played superbly and I know there are thoughts we should have opened with him, but it is very easy to be wise after something has happened. The Simon Jones over was the one that made it very difficult to win from. He bowled serious pace and got his length right.

Onto the two overseas players, Charl happened very quickly and with his skills and experience he really will do very well for us. A competitive and skillful bowler, he is also somebody that our young lads will learn from. He sat with Bally and myself after the game on Sunday talking about practice and bowling, it was area master class for Adam. He is only playing T20 cricket for us and will be here for the whole of the tournament. Wahab does not arrive here until probably Wednesday of this week and that is visa dependant. He has been in the West Indies and then recently Belfast playing for the Pakistan national team. He has gone back to Pakistan and then onto Dubai to do an English test, then apply for his visa. The Pakistan Cricket Board released their announcement about his Certificate of no Objection on Saturday morning, which was something we hadn’t planned for. Our plan was to wait until he had his visa before we announced he was coming, but once they had made their announcement we followed with ours. We haven’t tried to hide anything, but until we knew about the visa for both players we didn’t want to jump the gun and then find the players couldn’t get into the country. Lets hope the visa arrives and Wahab gets on his flight and arrives in time to play at Taunton. He is due to play all forms of the game for us whilst he is here. The plan at the moment is for him to play until the 20^th August, but that is again down to negotiation.

One other tough bit of news for us this week is that Jarre has broken his right index finger and will be out of action for about ten days. He did it in fielding practice last Thursday, and although he played over the weekend, was struggling to hold the bat. Hopefully he will be back for the game at Lords.

Best wishes,

Farby.