Coach’s Corner – Farby’s Blog – 9 May

Another week and sadly two defeats, and two tough defeats to take as well. I hate losing games at any time, but as long as there is fight and passion in there you can always take good things from a defeat, although like anybody else you would rather take good things from a win. There is a saying in sport that you find out about people when you lose or the going gets tough, well we are finding out about our squad and you also find out about people who stick with you through tough times. That’s people on and off the field, not just players, but everybody connected to the club.

The Northants defeat was tough in the sense that had we batted better in the first innings we would have had a great chance of winning the game against a very experienced Northants team. They are made up of players from all over the place, not many if at all from that county, but none the less we still came away thinking it was a game we could have won. 280 was not enough first innings, and 350 plus was the score we needed to post. The bowling attack we had for that game was as inexperienced as any attack Kent has ever probably put out, and yet another 70 runs first innings and we may have come out with a win.

I thought the sight of Tred and Riles bowling together gave great hope and optimism for the future of Kent cricket, they bowled well together and are going to win us games this summer as a pair. It really will make a difference to James to have somebody to work with and allow him to show his high levels of skill. We must not get too carried away with Adams start to first class cricket, but equally it was very encouraging to see him bowl so well on his debut, and show that he looks like he belongs at that level.

Adam Ball heads back to the classroom this week, and I would guess that in between revision sessions for his Biology and Maths exams he will probably be drawn to thinking about how he has done over the last couple of weeks. Well if he does allow himself some reflection time he will hopefully be quite pleased with his efforts. He has shown what a mature young lad he is, and has perhaps surprised one or two with his batting skills. He quite rightly has praised Simon Willis for working hard with him over the winter on his batting, but Simon has spent a lot of time with both him and Riles, and as I have said before young players take a lot of nurturing and Wilco will continue to do just that.

It is worth sparing a thought for Wilco at this moment, if you think we are having it tough getting a team out onto the field for first eleven games, then perhaps just think how tough it is for Simon. He had to wait until yesterday evening to confirm his team for todays four day game at Beckenham. We had fitness tests taking place during yesterday`s game on Cookie, RJ and Nel. We also had to make sure Colesy came through ok.

It does mean that once we get into the full second teams matches we will have a very young and inexperienced team, but it will give the academy players and other young lads the chance to show off their skills. Simon will spend his Saturdays watching league cricket and following up on any tips we get on promising young players. The Hartley and Lordswood game on Saturday gave him chance to watch some very talented young lads, some who have come through the academy like Dan Stickels and others who are on the academy at the moment.

Back to yesterdays game, as much as I would like to avoid it, we didn’t bowl well enough and gave our batsmen a mountain to climb, we had a poor day with the ball, no excuses and got it wrong. I thought our ground fielding was top class, especially Sam and Blakey, with some very good catching, and Stevos at mid off was as good as you will see. We could point to their attack being just about as good as you will come across, but the simple fact was we didn’t do our basics well enough.

On to Cardiff this week and the chance to build on some very good second innings performances over the last two Championship games, we are not far away from putting on a good team performance. The last two Championship games we have fought back in the second innings, but this week we know we need to start well and make sure that come the third innings we are right in there with a chance to win, not having to fight hard to stay in the game.

We have Colesy back for this week and Dewald Nel is also included in the squad, so bit by bit we are getting bowlers back to fitness, but I do hope that the young boys who have done very well make it very difficult for us to leave them out.

Best wishes,

Farby.