Season 8

How are his form and fitness? What's the pitch type (and bowling style) and weather?

 

I'd guess sunny is part of it. You also didn't say what the bowling style was, although I'm not sure if there's any particular style that tends to struggle on a green pitch.

 

I eventually figured it out from the box score. I know Cort (my fast bowler) has had some very expensive appearances, but I'm not sure about particulars of pitch type and weather.

Dunno if you've looked at the other matches in the series, but the competition is looking really ugly. Doctors finished 3rd last season and could find themselves in the basement this season. There are no gimmes.

 

had a really good cup win against a better side today, played GFI & won by 27 runs.

the next round in the cup is near impossible made harder by the fact I have difficult away matches in the OD & FC either side of it.

Only way I would be a slight outside chance is if I play GFI again, but need to be full strength in the FC match 2 days later...was going to GFI my OD match on friday because he has a couple of players who have dropped PFL to low levels so I should beat him on GFI.


hmm, decisions decisions...oh yeah, the bloke I am playing in the cup gets except seam ratings on a good day, plays with no spinners so I am setting my pitch to dusty (i have equally good spinners & pacers but normally play H & F) which means for the home FC match tuesday week I can play on a flat / dusty / slow pitch.

any advice / hints would be great - I also considered just putting out a reserve lineup in the cup but I want to win, and the only really scary part of his team are his 2 130k+ BTR FM bowlers.

 

Depending on how the two monsters are used, you might want to invert your lineup, put the weak bats first and the strong bats in the bottom order. That's a strategy that's had some success on occasion against a Windies team with two Windian NT bowlers that are usually used openers through.

If they're not doing openers through, I wouldn't think you'd want to do that, though... maybe if they open but only do the first ten or twelve overs, you'd want to drop your best bats a bit for protection, but probably not to the extent of completely inverting the order.

 

havent looked too deeply yet into how he plays against similar level teams, but last cup round against a side like mine he bowled them straight through.

I might reverse my batting line up & set all <woeful bats to VA so that they might steal some runs. I have done that before to some effect but not against these sort of monsters.

Another thing I was thinking was to set a bat to VD in the hope that he could last their 20 overs (prob wishful thinking) & let the others score runs.

 

Seems to me that might be counterproductive, as the point of reversing the lineup is to burn the balls bowled by the monsters -- you want your usual tail to hang in as long as possible so that your real batsmen can go to work on non-monsters.

No one bat is going to last the whole 20 overs, unless it's a really good one (like, say, Sarge, and even he's probably only a 50/50 proposition).

 

ouch.

won by an innings & 191 runs against a newish team, was able to rest 2 bowlers for the important OD match on friday.

 

Unless wickets drop a lot more easily in the second innings, my match is headed for a draw. We're 2/3 of the way through day 2, and I've still only got four of their wickets down after declaring at 458-4.

One thing that I wish I could do is set a declaration based on overs rather than runs for my second innings... if I should finish off Slumlords today, instead of guessing at RR, I'd rather be able to pick a number of overs where I would be fairly confident of a draw or a win.

 

I got up to seven wickets by the close of play. I've been helped immensely by a couple of run-outs. I'm definitely rejiggering my bowling lineup in response to performance, as a guy that I had written off due to poor form was one of my best for economy and also produced two of the wickets.

It still looks like a draw, but there's a glimmer of hope if I can get the other side out quickly tomorrow. I've set a declaration target that I hope will carry through about 60 overs, which would leave me in a situation where I would likely either win or draw.

 

I don't even remember what my declaration target was, but declaration was timed pretty close to perfect. The required RR was about 4.8, which was enough for me to be fairly confident that I wouldn't lose. So far, that's holding up, as my bowlers are holding Slumlords a bit under 4. With no wickets falling so far, it's a near certainty that we're looking at a draw, but I've at least gotten maximum batting and bowling points out of it (and denied Slumlords their bowling points with my first innings declaration).