Northamptonshire C.C.C - Rise To The Top

[DaveRobbo]

Every year I set myself the target of taking a D2 team and eventually winning the 3 major domestic trophies with them (D1, 50 over and T20). Didn't manage it last year due to a lack of time to play the game but I'm hoping to manage it on 19.

Club choice was tricky - Kent are my hometown team, but I've done Kent saves to death and we obviously aren't in D2 any more after last season. Eventually I narrowed it down to 3, due to work I've moved all around the country and have lived in Northumberland and Northampton, so Durham and Northants were options, as well as Lancashire (I live in Manchester at the moment!)

In the end it was a coin toss between the bottom 2 in real life which are Northants and Durham... It was literally a coin toss and it landed on heads - Northants it is!

[DaveRobbo]

There doesn't appear to be an awful lot of depth in the squad in terms of quality, especially with the bowlers. I think there's enough batting there to manage for the first season at least. Talented batsmen include Bavuma, Wakeley, Cobb, Rossington and Ben Curran.

A couple of good seam bowlers in Sanderson and Buck but a distinct lack of out and out spinners. I took a punt on young leg spinner Jamie Dickinson in the transfer market as well as bringing in bowling all rounder Usman Arshad.

Northamptonshire Squad For 2019 Season

Batsmen

Temba Bavuma (Overseas)
Josh Cobb
Ben Curran
Rob Keogh
Richard Levi
Rob Newton
Charlie Thurston
Alex Wakely (Captain)
Adam Rossington (W/K)
Ricardo Vasconcelos

Bowlers

Nathan Buck
Ben Cotton
Brett Hutton
Blessing Muzarabani
Ben Sanderson
Graeme White
Jack White
Jamie Dickinson

All Rounders

Fahim Ashraf (20 over only)
Jason Holder (20 over only)
Dwayne Pretorius (20 over only)
Luke Procter
Tom Sole
Saif Zaib
Usman Arshad

[DaveRobbo]

We had a University match against Durham MCUU before the season started, a nice opportunity to test out some players before the Championship opener. I went for a strong team with a few players on the fringes of the first team given the opportunity as well.

As to be expected in the university match, we racked up a huge first innings total and bowled them out twice quickly to secure an innings victory. A nice confidence booster but obviously it'll be a lot tougher once the season starts.

Northamptonshire: 524-7 dec (Vasconcelos 178, Levi 109 - Saunders 2-50, Balderstone 2-90)

Durham MCCU: 185 (Kevan 60, Saunders 47 - White 4-53, Muzarabani 3-36)
Durham MCCU: 168 (Andrews 40, Griffith 31 - Muzarabani 4-35, Procter 3-33)

Northamptonshire win by an innings and 171 runs

[DaveRobbo]

County Championship Division 2
Northamptonshire v Middlesex

The first Championship game of the season is at home to Middlesex.

Team: Curran, Vasconcelos, Wakely (C), Keogh, Bavuma, Rossington (W/K), Cobb, Procter, Arshad, Buck, Sanderson.

Northamptonshire won the toss and elected to bat.

I always look to bat first whatever format of the game so after winning the toss I had no hesitation. We battled to a draw in the opening game, a spectacular performance from Josh Cobb hitting a century in each innings. Ultimately it was a game for the batsman and it fizzled out into a draw, we did struggle a bit with the ball though which was a concern although not wholly unexpected.

Very encouraging start batting wise though with the lesser known member of the Curran trio also reaching 3 figures alongside Cobb's heroics.

Northamptonshire: 328 (Cobb 119, Procter 51 - Roland-Jones 4-77, Dockrell 3-32)

Middlesex: 469 (Malan 133, Gubbins 78 - Sanderson 4-101, Procter 3-61)

Northamptonshire: 419 (Cobb 136, Curran 123 - Roland-Jones 3-112, Murtagh 3-101)

Middlesex: 94-2 (Eskinazi 46*, Robson 46 - Keogh 1-13)

Match Drawn.

[GrahamB]

Looking forward to following your story.

I've found Bavuma, Cobb, Levi and Rossington to be more than useful in my game.
Never thought much of Buck, but Muzarabani, Sanderson and Hutton seem to do well.

However, different saves, different results, different management.

Go Northamptonshire!

[MateGaming]

Looking forward to this!

[DaveRobbo]

GrahamB MateGaming Thanks I'm enjoying your two stories as well and both made me want to start this one in the first place.

Actually I posted the first Championship game last night as well, but my post is "awaiting approval" at the moment. Hopefully it'll be visible by the time I make further updates tonight or if not I'll briefly cover it again! ???????

[bryce87]

Actually I posted the first Championship game last night as well, but my post is "awaiting approval" at the moment. Hopefully it'll be visible by the time I make further updates tonight or if not I'll briefly cover it again! ???????

It is an incredibly annoying feature of this forum whereby if you edit a post twice, in succession, it needs moderator approval in order to be visible. I wish that it would be done away with!

[Sureshot]

It is an incredibly annoying feature of this forum whereby if you edit a post twice, in succession, it needs moderator approval in order to be visible. I wish that it would be done away with!

I've made a note to look at this next week, it can be annoying, but I'd rather it be too sensitive, than not sensitive enough and let some pretty nasty content from spam bots get on to the forum. We'd rather protect you guys from that and have to approve a few posts that are false-positives than the other way around.

[DaveRobbo]

It is an incredibly annoying feature of this forum whereby if you edit a post twice, in succession, it needs moderator approval in order to be visible. I wish that it would be done away with!

Yeah, will keep that in mind.

Sureshot is also on the case of what I'm calling the "Phantom Question Mark" which are appearing in some of my posts, like in my last post in this thread before this one. Just going to have to bear with that for the time being.

Anyway, the Middlesex game is showing now, got a few more games ready to update tonight ??????

[DaveRobbo]

County Championship Division 2
Glamorgan v Northamptonshire

We travelled to Glamorgan in the second Championship game hoping to build on the draw in the opener. The team was unchanged from the Middlesex clash.

Team: Curran, Vasconcelos, Wakely (C), Keogh, Bavuma, Rossington (W/K), Cobb, Procter, Arshad, Buck, Sanderson.

Northamptonshire won the toss and elected to bat.

We picked up a confidence boosting first win in Division 2 with what turned out to be a comfortable success over Glamorgan. I'm delighted with the start we've made with the bat as we passed 400 again for the second consecutive game, only downside is the scoring is a bit slow but we wrapped up victory with an hour to go in the final session.

Bowling was a lot better as well, albeit against weaker batsmen than we faced in the Middlesex game. Standout performances were Temba Bavuma passing 50 in both innings and falling just 2 short of a century, and Usman Arshad's game-winning 6 wicket haul in the second innings. A really promising start to the campaign.

Northamptonshire: 405 (Keogh 89, Bavuma 72 - Hogan 6-102, van der Gugten 2-90)

Glamorgan: 303 (Root 86, Cooke 66 - Sanderson 3-27, Procter 3-66)

Northamptonshire: 285-8 dec (Bavuma 98, Cobb 66* - Wagg 4-59, de Lange 2-70)

Glamorgan: 248 (Root 71, Selman 46 - Arshad 6-61, Cobb 2-18)

Northamptonshire win by 139 runs.

So a great start to the first class season which sees us in 3rd, although early days. Onto the white ball stuff now, at the moment I'm more interested in seeing whether those pesky phantom question marks will appear on this post!
???

??

[GrahamB]

Great start so far!

[DaveRobbo]

Brilliant, they did! No idea why it's happening but just going to have to ignore it for the moment.

One Day Cup Group Stage
Durham v Northamptonshire

We mixed the team up a bit for the first one day game, I didn't have particularly high hopes coming into this competition as my focus for the first season is very much on the Championship, although a good showing in a one day competition would be nice.

Team: Curran, Newton, Wakely (C), Levi, Rossington (W/K), Cobb, Bavuma, Sole, Arshad, White, Sanderson.

Northamptonshire won the toss and elected to bat.

We won the toss again, for the third time in a row and batted again. I don't like chasing in a one day game as a few lost wickets often leads to panic stations. A century from Rob Newton led us to a total of 282 which I was fairly pleased with, useful contributions all the way down the board.

An unbeaten century from controversial Aussie opener Cameron Bancroft saw Durham chase down the target though with 4 overs to spare. We didn't trouble them enough unfortunately, just simply didn't take enough wickets and didn't put the Durham batsmen under enough pressure.

Northamptonshire: 282-5 (Newton 113, Wakely 53 - Raine 3-52)

Durham: 285-3 - 46.3 overs (Bancroft 133*, Clark 65 - Sanderson 3-67).

Durham win by 7 wickets.

[DaveRobbo]

Great start so far!

Thanks Graham, let's hope it lasts

[bryce87]

Sureshot is also on the case of what I'm calling the "Phantom Question Mark" which are appearing in some of my posts, like in my last post in this thread before this one. Just going to have to bear with that for the time being.

I have noticed those question marks appear when I attempt to input incompatible emojis on the forum, meaning ones that come from your device. The only emojis you can select from and successfully use on this forum are the ones at the bottom of the section where you type your post.

That aside, the first year white ball season has begun. It is always very tough going unfortunately. Fielding five bowlers that take wickets and do not get walloped is a challenge!