Apologies for mis-typing

Re Surrey squeaking past Gloucs, ChrisfromStroud typed:

Oh Pooh.
Never mind, well played chaps.
See you in a few years when you too get promoted to Div 1...

Bearing in mind:
North 164 from 11 (Middx, Derby, Middx, Surrey, Gloucs to go)
Middx 159 from 10 (North, Kent, North, Leics, Glam, Leics to go)
Gloucs 139 from 11 (Derby, Essex, Glam, Leics, North to go)
Surrey 135 from 11 (Kent, Leics, North, Essex, Derby to go),

I apologise for the slippage of my fingers, as I clearly meant to type "see you again in division 2 next year..."

Northants & Middx are going to take some points off each other, but do you think there may be some further crumbling at the top?

I get the impression that as the season draws to a close, the mental side of things comes to the fore and the leading teams seem to exert their dominance and win quite easily. Has anybody got any stats?

I don't have any evidence to back up your theory, Chris, but I agree that the teams at the bottom will probably be a lot easier to beat now than they ere at the start of the season. Confidence is a big thing in 4 day cricket and us Surrey lot have seen our team barely win a match for 3 years so we know how difficult it can be to rise out of a slump.

That said, only really Leicestershire and Kent look completely out of contention and Glamorgan are usually hard to beat so I don't think it will be easy for anyone. Northants, Middlesex, Essex, Surrey and Gloucs are all reasonably evenly matched so I still think it's all to play for.

From a Surrey point of view the next two games against the weakest two teams in the division are crucial, we need to win them both to give ourselves a realistic chance of promotion before a tough final 3 against N'hants, Essex and Derby. I'm a lot happier with our 4 day performance than I was at the start of the season, we finally seem to have moved in the right direction, although we still have a long way to go yet of course. I don't think we'll manage promotion this time but I hope I'm wrong!

It looks like you have a slightly tougher final run to us Chris so I'm not sure I can see you lot gaining promotion this year either, from both of our points of view it could be handy for Middx to win all of their games which would include beating Nhants twice to leave us to fight with Nhants for 2nd place.

At the moment I'm not sure that either Surrey or Gloucs are particularly deserving of promotion - but we have to go for it....

I agree that sides out of contention can get skittled fairly easily as we move into Sept. There's no relegation and sides may well be playing a scattering of young players, while old hacks may be easing off a bit....

"Old hacks"?
What, like Jon Lewis??

Or maybe Jon Batty; he's been easing off for a couple of seasons now...

ChrisfromStroud wrote:Re Surrey squeaking past Gloucs, ChrisfromStroud typed:

Northants & Middx are going to take some points off each other, but do you think there may be some further crumbling at the top?

I suppose Northants are not in the best of form - they've slipped recently in the CB40 and have gone three county championship games without a win. If they lose to Middlesex and either/both Surrey and Gloucs win then they might start to wilt under the pressure...

ChrisfromStroud wrote:"Old hacks"?
What, like Jon Lewis??

Or maybe Jon Batty; he's been easing off for a couple of seasons now...

Batty hit another six in his better-then-a-run-a-ball innings today in the CB40. If he was a still a Surrey player the Surrey website would no doubt be reporting that he was in a rich vein of form....

Unfortunately, better-than-a-run-a-ball was nowhere near good enough at that stage of the innings. Cannot understand why he was promoted above Big-Hitting-Kevin-O'Brien, who was left with just 7 balls to face.
Sometimes the captain's decisions baffle me. I understand you have the same concerns at Surrey.
PS We lost.......

Wait, so the guy who has hit 100 from 50 balls came in below Batty?

??
!!

i have to say im not sure gloucester have any match winning bowlers

We don't need match-winning bowlers, we need a match-winning team!
The whole should be greater than the sum of the parts, as Mr Gestalt once said. Or perhaps it was 'Arry Stotle.
That whole used to revolve around the leadership of Mark Alleyne MBE, and we've had nothing of that quality since.