Iain O'Brien's Cricket Blog

Middlesex CCC, we’ve started the season four from four in the Championship.  That’s four loses from four matches, not four wins.  I’ve never been a part of a worse start to a season than this; and it hurts. 

To find something or someone to blame, to find factors to explain the results is quite tough.  As a team we have had some good chats, player orientated not coach driven, to work out why we’ve not been able to put together ‘team’ performances.  As individuals, in places, we certainly have been playing some very good cricket.  There have been three hundreds and four five wicket bags.  That’s not bad reading, but as we all remember from the 2009 Ashes, the team that scores the most hundreds and takes the most wickets doesn’t always win the competition.  It’s the other performances around those singular individual efforts that haven’t been up to scratch.  We haven’t played as a team yet. We haven’t put a team performance on the board yet.

This last match, vs Gloucestershire, was, well, our fourth loss; a big one in the end, 103 runs.  We had a chase of 289 to win in the fourth innings, probably, well, very much so, about 40 runs more than it should have been.  On the morning of the third day with Gloucestershire 220 in front and seven down we really failed to knock them over and hopefully chase 250.  We bowled poorly, none more so than me.  I had one of those mornings.  I felt really good but couldn’t keep a line; my lengths were just fine.  It’s a horrible feeling when you know you’ve got to turn it on and it just won’t work.  We were down on bowler, abdominal strain, so it wasn’t like I could get myself out of the attack and try the other end quite as easy.  We gave them a large advantage and made the chase that much harder.

This match was a chance to catch up with Hamish Marshall and James Franklin who both play for Gloucestershire.  Both are having good starts to the summer and enjoying it all.  Of course, as a Kiwi, there’s extra pressure to do well against these boys, and vice versa.  I, obviously, wanted to get them out; they wanted to score as many as they could off me.  I managed to get one over Marshy when he was on 72 but couldn’t budge Franky; and that was not through lack of trying.  I bowled one of my better spells to a left hander to him.

I finished with seven wickets in the first innings, and was back out in the middle soon after as nightwatchman.  This time my nightwatchman was more of a “night-have-a-slash-at-the-first-ball-you-face-knicking-it-to-the-keeper-man.”  So I really didn’t do my job here, a day of highs and a very big low.  I guess, looking back, I was probably asking a lot of myself to do the nighty job after the highs of getting seven.  If I get the chance again, I’ll hopefully know how to play it better.

This seven (for 48) is my second best innings figures.  I was gutted to not turn it into a 10 wicket match as I only managed one in the second innings.

We start again tomorrow against Sussex, here in Hove; which is in Brighton on the south coast.  Sussex have quite the opposite record this summer to us; they’re four from four, wins that is so it’s not going to be an easy one; although if we are to turn around this start of the season, we might as well do it against the current best team in the league.

As I’ve said, we’ve played four Championship matches. Back home, in NZ, the last few summers there has been between eight and ten Championship matches across the whole summer making up the whole competition.  Which means, here, in under a month we will have finished five matches.  Something to think about......