Apologies for letting the side down, guys. I fear my rain dancing days may be over.
I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself recently and have spent the past hour Zooooooming with our dear friend & fellow Addick, Marilyn who cheered me up no end.
Then, back to see what's happening in Welsh Wales ....and the black cloud has descended again.
It's going to take something special from our lads tomorrow afternoon to raise my spirits once more.
Very few options even given that these are the averages this season for our 14 available contracted players:
Joe Denly - 13.28 Zac Crawley - 24.00 Daniel Bell-Drummond - 26.50 Jack Leaning - 14.42 Tawanda Muyeye - N/A Ollie Robinson - 38.33 Jordan Cox - 33.42 Darren Stevens - 36.83 Matt Milnes - 32.40 Nathan Gilchrist - N/A Fred Klaassen - 2.66 Miguel Cummins - 11.50 Hamidullah Qadri - N/A Marcus O'Riordan - N/A
Heino Kuhn - INJURED Alex Blake - WHITE BALL CONTRACT ONLY Sam Billings - AWAY Harry Podmore - INJURED Grant Stewart - INJURED Tim Groenewald - INJURED Mohammad Amir - VITALITY BLAST ONLY Imran Qayyum - INJURED
The 2s have struggled too and been beaten easily this season albeit that the previous games have been a mixed Kent/Sussex team. This week's match is an all Kent side but I would not be surprised if there aren't more than two or three first teamers playing. In fact, you could have the situation where, as they do, they have one or two play for the first two days for the 2s before shooting off to join the first team squad.
Of the Kent League players, Bromley's captain, Sam Smith, has to be top of the list. He was in the Academy 'til he was in his late teens but wasn't offered a contract. Since then he has been scoring runs for fun and did, in fact, play in the last 2s game.
At the end of the day this all comes down to finances. We made a massive loss last year and we are trying to run a very tight ship with little or no income coming in. The Cummins (for only the first 8 CC games) and Amir signings will have taken a lot of any surplus. But we only have a red ball squad of 19 and with one away in the IPL, another who has little 2s experience and no First Team games of any description and another five injured, there is really little opportunity to bring in fresh faces who are likely to score runs.
There is no magic remedy - unless we can perhaps get one or two players in on short term loans perhaps.
The 2s have struggled too and been beaten easily this season albeit that the previous games have been a mixed Kent/Sussex team. This week's match is an all Kent side but I would not be surprised if there aren't more than two or three first teamers playing. In fact, you could have the situation where, as they do, they have one or two play for the first two days for the 2s before shooting off to join the first team squad.
Of the Kent League players, Bromley's captain, Sam Smith, has to be top of the list. He was in the Academy 'til he was in his late teens but wasn't offered a contract. Since then he has been scoring runs for fun and did, in fact, play in the last 2s game.
At the end of the day this all comes down to finances. We made a massive loss last year and we are trying to run a very tight ship with little or no income coming in. The Cummins (for only the first 8 CC games) and Amir signings will have taken a lot of any surplus. But we only have a red ball squad of 19 and with one away in the IPL, another who has little 2s experience and no First Team games of any description and another five injured, there is really little opportunity to bring in fresh faces who are likely to score runs.
There is no magic remedy - unless we can perhaps get one or two players in on short term loans perhaps.
This all makes sense, but why are our 'International' batsmen playing so poorly?
Denly, Crawley, Bell-Drummond, and now Kuhn are all consistently recording low scores ... with the occasional decent knock keeping the average alive.
Yes, I know that wickets and batting conditions are not ideal at this time of year, but other teams seem to be coping much better.
It has come to something when a defeat by ten wickets inside two days is one of our better results of the season so far.
The 2s have struggled too and been beaten easily this season albeit that the previous games have been a mixed Kent/Sussex team. This week's match is an all Kent side but I would not be surprised if there aren't more than two or three first teamers playing. In fact, you could have the situation where, as they do, they have one or two play for the first two days for the 2s before shooting off to join the first team squad.
Of the Kent League players, Bromley's captain, Sam Smith, has to be top of the list. He was in the Academy 'til he was in his late teens but wasn't offered a contract. Since then he has been scoring runs for fun and did, in fact, play in the last 2s game.
At the end of the day this all comes down to finances. We made a massive loss last year and we are trying to run a very tight ship with little or no income coming in. The Cummins (for only the first 8 CC games) and Amir signings will have taken a lot of any surplus. But we only have a red ball squad of 19 and with one away in the IPL, another who has little 2s experience and no First Team games of any description and another five injured, there is really little opportunity to bring in fresh faces who are likely to score runs.
There is no magic remedy - unless we can perhaps get one or two players in on short term loans perhaps.
This all makes sense, but why are our 'International' batsmen playing so poorly?
Denly, Crawley, Bell-Drummond, and now Kuhn are all consistently recording low scores ... with the occasional decent knock keeping the average alive.
Yes, I know that wickets and batting conditions are not ideal at this time of year, but other teams seem to be coping much better.
It has come to something when a defeat by ten wickets inside two days is one of our better results of the season so far.
And the other clubs have had to deal with the terrible financial situation as well, so presumably most of them will have been running smaller squads as well
Agreed it's baffling why our batsmen are struggling so much this season when compared to last year
Kent U18s played Middlesex yesterday. A game of four halves!
Kent batted first and from 179-3 (first half) they succeeded in losing 7 wickets for 47 runs (second half) to end up 226 all out with over 5 overs still to be bowled. Seb came in at 7 and produced, in his words, the "worst innings he has played in ages" for 5 off 16 balls. We were probably 50-60 runs short of a par score.
Middlesex at 81-0 off their first 12 overs were cruising (third half) but they succeeded in losing all 10 wickets over the course of the next 28 overs for just 88 (fourth half) to enable Kent to win by an unexpected 58 runs. Seb kept and made up to a small extent for his batting display with a hand in a run out plus 3 catches. The car journey home was better than one might have expected at the half way stage!
I see Harry Finch, recently released by Sussex, is playing for our 2s today and is currently 67 not out. There also appears to be two other "out of county" triallists - Joshua Fallows, a 22 year old from Lancs and also "O J Newby". The only one of that name I can find is Oliver Newby, again from Lancs, who is 36 and last played in 2014!
In true Kent style the 2s have gone from 200-0 (Finch 119 & Gordon 86) to 235-8.
The story of the collapse is the introduction of Jack Laraman who has figures of 16-6-33-5. Jack came through the Kent age group system and still plays for Lordswood. The last 2nd X1 game he played appears to have been back in 2018 for Surrey so he is clearly now opted to try to gain a pro contract with Northants.
As a side line, Jack's Dad, Carl, was a youth team player with Charlton and coached for nine years before moving to Arsenal where he spent 13 years coaching. His departure came under a bit of a cloud when he and Steve Gatting were suspended in 2018 following complaints from some U23 players relating to alleged bullying.
In true Kent style the 2s have gone from 200-0 (Finch 119 & Gordon 86) to 235-8.
The story of the collapse is the introduction of Jack Laraman who has figures of 16-6-33-5. Jack came through the Kent age group system and still plays for Lordswood. The last 2nd X1 game he played appears to have been back in 2018 for Surrey so he is clearly now opted to try to gain a pro contract with Northants.
As a side line, Jack's Dad, Carl, was a youth team player with Charlton and coached for nine years before moving to Arsenal where he spent 13 years coaching. His departure came under a bit of a cloud when he and Steve Gatting were suspended in 2018 following complaints from some U23 players relating to alleged bullying.
Are they related to ex addick Peter Laraman who must be nearly eighty now?
Just watched an incredibly moving video about Alan Igglesden and the work of the Professional Cricketers Trust help in assisting him in living with a brain tumour. This is the link to the film and below that is an article by Michael Atherton about Iggy:
The last time I saw Alan Igglesden in the flesh, he gently guided my thumb into a hole in his head. The hole was hidden by a full thatch of hair — not quite the mullet he sported in his heyday as a beanpole fast bowler for Kent and England, and grey now, but a full head of hair nonetheless. The hole? Well, that was a reminder of the trauma that struck this most amiable of giants once his professional playing career was over.
We were chatting at the England players’ dinner four years ago, organised by Andrew Strauss, the England director of cricket at the time. During his speech that night Strauss told the story of Fred Tate, who played one Test for England, disastrously so, in 1902. The moral of the tale was that it didn’t really matter how many games you’d played for England, or how well you’d played — you belonged to a rather special club.
The Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) is like that as well. No matter how many first-class games you have played, how many runs you’ve scored or wickets taken, once you have been a professional cricketer, once you have signed on the dotted line for a county, it is there for you, in good times and bad. Mostly bad, because that’s when it comes into its own.Iggy is a member of both clubs. He played for Kent between 1986 and 1998, taking 503 first-class wickets and 190 in List A cricket. He was tall, nippy, moved the ball away; quite a handful on his day. England came calling in 1989, memorably so during a summer of four Ashes defeats and numerous injuries, when 29 players were used. Micky Stewart, the England coach at the time, described him as the 17th-best seamer in the country before a debut at the Oval for the sixth and final Test; it was meant as a reflection on the injury list, but wasn’t taken that way by those hungry to apportion blame.He played two more Tests after that, under my captaincy in the Caribbean in 1993-94, and four one-day internationals. He continued to perform ably for Kent, until the end of his first-class career four years later, and, pretty much, that’s when the troubles began. Specifically, one day in 1999, when representing Berkshire, he had an epileptic fit and the subsequent brain scan to discover the cause showed a tumour the size of a junior cricket ball.Because of its location, the tumour was inoperable. He was put on an experimental drug regime, which first reduced the tumour to the size of a golf ball and then stabilised its growth and, for a long time, things were manageable. He taught and coached at Sutton Valence School, near Maidstone in Kent, and then in Yorkshire, where he moved to be with his wife, Liz, a teacher. They settled in Keighley and in 2013, against the odds given the drug regime he had been on, had a daughter, Beth.What Liz calls “the quiet time”, when life was manageable despite the tumour, was coming to an end. In 2009 the tumour erupted. Iggy had life-saving surgery in Sheffield, followed by chemotherapy. In 2015-16 there were signs that the tumour was growing again. Despite this, he was a full-time father to Beth at this point, while Liz was working, and so he enjoyed those marvellous early years of parenthood — a precious memory.Then, three years ago, came a stroke. The timing, Liz says, was “hideous”, since she had just given up full-time work and they had hoped to start a business together. He endured a hospital stay of two months and was paralysed down his right side, but eventually got some movement back in his right arm and right leg, so that he could walk with sticks. He recovered to the point where Liz felt comfortable enough leaving him on his own for stretches at a time. A recovery of sorts.Then, in September last year, the hammer blow of another, more serious, stroke, which, Liz says, “completely wiped him out”. The three-month stay in hospital was difficult, given Covid restrictions, which initially meant that he could not see family for weeks on end.The paralysis of his right side returned; his movement has barely come back, and talking is difficult. The cruel irony is that he can now barely lift the arm that once propelled a cricket ball at nearly 90mph. Iggy’s left side, though, is fine, as he demonstrated to me on FaceTime at the weekend — he always had a strong leading arm and pull through. With Liz’s help, we chatted about old times: about part of a winter we spent together in Cape Town, between the time of Nelson Mandela’s release from Robben Island and the ascent to the presidency of South Africa. Iggy was playing for Greenpoint Cricket Club and Boland and I was recovering from back surgery there.We talked about the Oval Test of 1989 — his first, my second — and his first two Test wickets, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, two good scalps to pocket. We talked about the England A tour to Kenya and Zimbabwe in 1990 and about the tour to the Caribbean in 1993-94: 46 all out in Trinidad, a remarkable win in Barbados and Brian Lara’s world-record 375, which, because Iggy was injured, he — thankfully for him — missed.Before we talked, I had an image in my mind of Jim Carrey in The Truman Show when he finally realises his world is fake and tries to escape, and Ed Harris, as the godlike Christof, sends winds, rain, lightning and then, finally, the mother of all storms to stop the journey.As his boat rights itself in the storm, Carrey looks up to the sky, rain lashing down, and wonders what else the fates have in store for him. You wouldn’t blame Iggy for looking up and wondering: is a brain tumour not enough? Now a stroke, and then another?But Iggy, at 56, is not one to wallow in self-pity; before his tumour and afterwards, he has always had an amazingly positive view of life. Liz says that he got Covid-19 in February, but only mildly, and within days had the nurses at the hospital eating out of his hand, bringing extra biscuits and goodies — and this despite not really being able to communicate. Zoom talks with friends — Liz singles out Phil Tufnell as one who has been incredibly supportive — are upbeat, as was our conversation over the weekend.Through it all, he has concentrated on living his best life and on raising awareness and money for brain cancer, more than £300,000 now for The Brain Tumour Charity, for whom he is a patron. But things have become incredibly difficult and stressful in the past year, on the back of the second stroke. It means that he can no longer be given treatment for the tumour, nor can scans be taken, and so they are in the dark as to what is happening inside his head — literally.The Professional Cricketers’ Trust, which is the charitable arm of the PCA, is releasing a film today to highlight Iggy’s plight. It is a difficult watch. The family are incredibly thankful for the support that the Trust has provided. Funds, first of all, to allow Liz to give up her job and become a full-time carer, as well as a stairlift that allows Iggy the independence to get up and down the stairs and spend time in the garden on warm days, rather than being stuck in his room, and a mobile scooter that enables trips out.Journeys to Bingley Congs, for example, the local cricket club that has become something of a lifeline, as all good community clubs are, of friendship and fun no matter what. On Friday a few of his former Kent team-mates — Steve Marsh, Matthew Fleming, Martin McCague and Dean Headley — will make the trip up to Yorkshire to say hello and remember the good times. There have been plenty of them.
A lot of hate is aimed at club captain Sam Billings, who regularly misses matches because of franchise or England duty. This is bizarre because cricket is different to other sports. In cricket the aim in England is to develop international and franchise players – the more, the better. So, when Kent’s star man is doing just that, fans should be proud, rather than throw abuse.
England yes, but the aim of counties isn't to develop franchise players. If they play the leagues outside the county season, that's great, but when their franchise commitments clash with the county game, why should we be happy?
Comments
WTF
I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself recently and have spent the past hour Zooooooming with our dear friend & fellow Addick, Marilyn who cheered me up no end.
Then, back to see what's happening in Welsh Wales ....and the black cloud has descended again.
It's going to take something special from our lads tomorrow afternoon to raise my spirits once more.
Fat chance....
Very few options even given that these are the averages this season for our 14 available contracted players:
Joe Denly - 13.28
Zac Crawley - 24.00
Daniel Bell-Drummond - 26.50
Jack Leaning - 14.42
Tawanda Muyeye - N/A
Ollie Robinson - 38.33
Jordan Cox - 33.42
Darren Stevens - 36.83
Matt Milnes - 32.40
Nathan Gilchrist - N/A
Fred Klaassen - 2.66
Miguel Cummins - 11.50
Hamidullah Qadri - N/A
Marcus O'Riordan - N/A
Heino Kuhn - INJURED
Alex Blake - WHITE BALL CONTRACT ONLY
Sam Billings - AWAY
Harry Podmore - INJURED
Grant Stewart - INJURED
Tim Groenewald - INJURED
Mohammad Amir - VITALITY BLAST ONLY
Imran Qayyum - INJURED
Of the Kent League players, Bromley's captain, Sam Smith, has to be top of the list. He was in the Academy 'til he was in his late teens but wasn't offered a contract. Since then he has been scoring runs for fun and did, in fact, play in the last 2s game.
At the end of the day this all comes down to finances. We made a massive loss last year and we are trying to run a very tight ship with little or no income coming in. The Cummins (for only the first 8 CC games) and Amir signings will have taken a lot of any surplus. But we only have a red ball squad of 19 and with one away in the IPL, another who has little 2s experience and no First Team games of any description and another five injured, there is really little opportunity to bring in fresh faces who are likely to score runs.
There is no magic remedy - unless we can perhaps get one or two players in on short term loans perhaps.
Denly, Crawley, Bell-Drummond, and now Kuhn are all consistently recording low scores ... with the occasional decent knock keeping the average alive.
Yes, I know that wickets and batting conditions are not ideal at this time of year, but other teams seem to be coping much better.
It has come to something when a defeat by ten wickets inside two days is one of our better results of the season so far.
Agreed it's baffling why our batsmen are struggling so much this season when compared to last year
Kent batted first and from 179-3 (first half) they succeeded in losing 7 wickets for 47 runs (second half) to end up 226 all out with over 5 overs still to be bowled. Seb came in at 7 and produced, in his words, the "worst innings he has played in ages" for 5 off 16 balls. We were probably 50-60 runs short of a par score.
Middlesex at 81-0 off their first 12 overs were cruising (third half) but they succeeded in losing all 10 wickets over the course of the next 28 overs for just 88 (fourth half) to enable Kent to win by an unexpected 58 runs. Seb kept and made up to a small extent for his batting display with a hand in a run out plus 3 catches. The car journey home was better than one might have expected at the half way stage!
Harry Finch 111*
Joe Gordon 69*
Northants won the toss and put us in too. At least they will be pleased with no extras!
The story of the collapse is the introduction of Jack Laraman who has figures of 16-6-33-5. Jack came through the Kent age group system and still plays for Lordswood. The last 2nd X1 game he played appears to have been back in 2018 for Surrey so he is clearly now opted to try to gain a pro contract with Northants.
As a side line, Jack's Dad, Carl, was a youth team player with Charlton and coached for nine years before moving to Arsenal where he spent 13 years coaching. His departure came under a bit of a cloud when he and Steve Gatting were suspended in 2018 following complaints from some U23 players relating to alleged bullying.
Gilchrist 46 not out
https://www.kentcricket.co.uk/news/iggys-toughest-test-alan-igglesdens-story/?fbclid=IwAR3kmsqwHK2vSOuxSy1ht3FVNke5KK1UooH8JWEH0A25syPeerGwCv8NstU
The last time I saw Alan Igglesden in the flesh, he gently guided my thumb into a hole in his head. The hole was hidden by a full thatch of hair — not quite the mullet he sported in his heyday as a beanpole fast bowler for Kent and England, and grey now, but a full head of hair nonetheless. The hole? Well, that was a reminder of the trauma that struck this most amiable of giants once his professional playing career was over.
We were chatting at the England players’ dinner four years ago, organised by Andrew Strauss, the England director of cricket at the time. During his speech that night Strauss told the story of Fred Tate, who played one Test for England, disastrously so, in 1902. The moral of the tale was that it didn’t really matter how many games you’d played for England, or how well you’d played — you belonged to a rather special club.
The Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) is like that as well. No matter how many first-class games you have played, how many runs you’ve scored or wickets taken, once you have been a professional cricketer, once you have signed on the dotted line for a county, it is there for you, in good times and bad. Mostly bad, because that’s when it comes into its own.Iggy is a member of both clubs. He played for Kent between 1986 and 1998, taking 503 first-class wickets and 190 in List A cricket. He was tall, nippy, moved the ball away; quite a handful on his day. England came calling in 1989, memorably so during a summer of four Ashes defeats and numerous injuries, when 29 players were used. Micky Stewart, the England coach at the time, described him as the 17th-best seamer in the country before a debut at the Oval for the sixth and final Test; it was meant as a reflection on the injury list, but wasn’t taken that way by those hungry to apportion blame.He played two more Tests after that, under my captaincy in the Caribbean in 1993-94, and four one-day internationals. He continued to perform ably for Kent, until the end of his first-class career four years later, and, pretty much, that’s when the troubles began. Specifically, one day in 1999, when representing Berkshire, he had an epileptic fit and the subsequent brain scan to discover the cause showed a tumour the size of a junior cricket ball.Because of its location, the tumour was inoperable. He was put on an experimental drug regime, which first reduced the tumour to the size of a golf ball and then stabilised its growth and, for a long time, things were manageable. He taught and coached at Sutton Valence School, near Maidstone in Kent, and then in Yorkshire, where he moved to be with his wife, Liz, a teacher. They settled in Keighley and in 2013, against the odds given the drug regime he had been on, had a daughter, Beth.What Liz calls “the quiet time”, when life was manageable despite the tumour, was coming to an end. In 2009 the tumour erupted. Iggy had life-saving surgery in Sheffield, followed by chemotherapy. In 2015-16 there were signs that the tumour was growing again. Despite this, he was a full-time father to Beth at this point, while Liz was working, and so he enjoyed those marvellous early years of parenthood — a precious memory.Then, three years ago, came a stroke. The timing, Liz says, was “hideous”, since she had just given up full-time work and they had hoped to start a business together. He endured a hospital stay of two months and was paralysed down his right side, but eventually got some movement back in his right arm and right leg, so that he could walk with sticks. He recovered to the point where Liz felt comfortable enough leaving him on his own for stretches at a time. A recovery of sorts.Then, in September last year, the hammer blow of another, more serious, stroke, which, Liz says, “completely wiped him out”. The three-month stay in hospital was difficult, given Covid restrictions, which initially meant that he could not see family for weeks on end.The paralysis of his right side returned; his movement has barely come back, and talking is difficult. The cruel irony is that he can now barely lift the arm that once propelled a cricket ball at nearly 90mph. Iggy’s left side, though, is fine, as he demonstrated to me on FaceTime at the weekend — he always had a strong leading arm and pull through. With Liz’s help, we chatted about old times: about part of a winter we spent together in Cape Town, between the time of Nelson Mandela’s release from Robben Island and the ascent to the presidency of South Africa. Iggy was playing for Greenpoint Cricket Club and Boland and I was recovering from back surgery there.We talked about the Oval Test of 1989 — his first, my second — and his first two Test wickets, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, two good scalps to pocket. We talked about the England A tour to Kenya and Zimbabwe in 1990 and about the tour to the Caribbean in 1993-94: 46 all out in Trinidad, a remarkable win in Barbados and Brian Lara’s world-record 375, which, because Iggy was injured, he — thankfully for him — missed.Before we talked, I had an image in my mind of Jim Carrey in The Truman Show when he finally realises his world is fake and tries to escape, and Ed Harris, as the godlike Christof, sends winds, rain, lightning and then, finally, the mother of all storms to stop the journey.As his boat rights itself in the storm, Carrey looks up to the sky, rain lashing down, and wonders what else the fates have in store for him. You wouldn’t blame Iggy for looking up and wondering: is a brain tumour not enough? Now a stroke, and then another?But Iggy, at 56, is not one to wallow in self-pity; before his tumour and afterwards, he has always had an amazingly positive view of life. Liz says that he got Covid-19 in February, but only mildly, and within days had the nurses at the hospital eating out of his hand, bringing extra biscuits and goodies — and this despite not really being able to communicate. Zoom talks with friends — Liz singles out Phil Tufnell as one who has been incredibly supportive — are upbeat, as was our conversation over the weekend.Through it all, he has concentrated on living his best life and on raising awareness and money for brain cancer, more than £300,000 now for The Brain Tumour Charity, for whom he is a patron. But things have become incredibly difficult and stressful in the past year, on the back of the second stroke. It means that he can no longer be given treatment for the tumour, nor can scans be taken, and so they are in the dark as to what is happening inside his head — literally.The Professional Cricketers’ Trust, which is the charitable arm of the PCA, is releasing a film today to highlight Iggy’s plight. It is a difficult watch. The family are incredibly thankful for the support that the Trust has provided. Funds, first of all, to allow Liz to give up her job and become a full-time carer, as well as a stairlift that allows Iggy the independence to get up and down the stairs and spend time in the garden on warm days, rather than being stuck in his room, and a mobile scooter that enables trips out.Journeys to Bingley Congs, for example, the local cricket club that has become something of a lifeline, as all good community clubs are, of friendship and fun no matter what. On Friday a few of his former Kent team-mates — Steve Marsh, Matthew Fleming, Martin McCague and Dean Headley — will make the trip up to Yorkshire to say hello and remember the good times. There have been plenty of them.PCA does excellent work
I will be donating
https://www.kentsportsnews.com/kent-facing-uphill-2021-battle-05-05-2021/?fbclid=IwAR0N0daNpiUdRAvwy-aAE72Xz_OFh6IrrJvLhIRnmBjUNJXLGwBLrhytv_A
A lot of hate is aimed at club captain Sam Billings, who regularly misses matches because of franchise or England duty. This is bizarre because cricket is different to other sports. In cricket the aim in England is to develop international and franchise players – the more, the better. So, when Kent’s star man is doing just that, fans should be proud, rather than throw abuse.
England yes, but the aim of counties isn't to develop franchise players. If they play the leagues outside the county season, that's great, but when their franchise commitments clash with the county game, why should we be happy?