Well the end of the season had come and changes were to be made. There was a lot of dead wood that we would need to get rid of and hopefully bring in a few talented players. Unfortunately for us, Matthew Mason decided it was time to retire, after a good season. Ben Smith also decided to hang up the boots and Sanath Jayasuriya was a less important retirement.
We needed to decide on who to keep first. The players with only one year remaining in their contract were Phil Jaques, Shakib Al Hasan, Steven Smith, Alex Kervezee, Jack Manuel, Matthew Pardoe, Neil Pinner, Gareth Andrew and Richard Jones as well as our 2 promising youths, Adler and Stafford. Apart from that we had a squad of 13 players. We had $319,000 remaining as well to resign any player plus buy new ones unless we changed the coaching, youth team and physio budgets.
We weren?t actually allowed to resign any of the overseas players due to them not being able to play during the summer. We offered a 3 year contract at $25,500 a year to Alex Kervezee to try and resign our top scorer in the County Championship, hoping he would accept. Stafford and Adler were the only others that we offered contracts to, both 3 years. We also decided to terminate James Cameron?s contract so we could probably pick up a few signings, as well as releasing Chris Whelan.
Stuart Adler was the only player of the 3 to accept our first offer but we made slightly higher offers for Kervezee and Stafford, before we lost them. So now, if both of those would re-sign with the club, then this would be the current squad before new players would hopefully come and join.
Moeen Ali
Shaaiq Choudhry
Alex Kervezee
Daryl Mitchell
Vikram Solanki
Julian Stafford
Ben Cox
Stuart Adler
Joe Leach
David Wheeldon
Imran Arif
Alan Richardson
Chris Russell
Jack Shantry
So we would hopefully be looking for a couple of bowlers, with a spinner hopefully, as well as a good all-rounder, and maybe a new opening bat. In the first round of signing players, we managed to pick up Stephen Moore and Boyd Rankin at their requested salary?s, of $36,500 and $34,500 respectively. We would now be looking for an overseas international, as well as probably a T20 specialist. I?d think we?d skip the reserve International though. In the end, we decided to wait one more week, before making any offers but got the good news that both Stafford and Kervezee would re-sign for the club.
Now we looked at the Internationals. We needed a spinner so we decided to go with an unknown South African spinner, Calvin Flowers who had taken 17 wickets @ 21.23 so far in his short 4 match career. I heard he had talent and I was hoping that coming to England would help both his career and the team?s career. We also made a T20 offer for AB de Villiers, at $34,000. The $27,000 offer for Calvin Flowers was accepted. No good Domestic players had become available really, especially an all-rounder so with our spare money decided to use some of it up on International players. In case of Flowers being injured or maybe even a surprise South African callup if he had performed well during the season, I made an offer for Nathan Hauritz as a reserve spinner as well as deciding to aim for another T20 specialist in Daniel Vettori.
Both Daniel Vettori and AB de Villiers accepted their T20 offers but Hauritz?s salary was too low and we had to have an offer lower than $27,000 because of the rule that the reserve player?s salary could not be higher than the main overseas player. In the end, we settled with still a pretty big budget to spare so I decided to just put the rest into the Youth, Coaching and Physio budgets although we still had another $59,500 remaining but it might come in handy for later seasons. Also, I decided to appoint Alex Kervezee as captain for the new season. So now our full squad was:
Batsman:
Moeen Ali
Shaaiq Choudhry
Alex Kervezee (Captain)
Daryl Mitchell (Vice Captain)
Vikram Solanki
Julian Stafford Stephen Moore AB de Villiers (T20 Only)
Keepers:
Ben Cox
Stuart Adler
All-Rounders:
Joe Leach
David Wheeldon Daniel Vettori (T20 Only)
Bowlers:
Imran Arif
Alan Richardson
Chris Russell
Jack Shantry Boyd Rankin
Calvin Flowers (Overseas Player)
Bold = New Players
Probable XI:
1. Stephen Moore
2. Daryl Mitchell
3. Alex Kervezee*
4. Vikram Solanki
5. Julian Stafford
6. Stuart Adler+
7. David Wheeldon
8. Imran Arif 9. Calvin Flowers
10. Jack Shantry
11. Boyd Rankin
haha, I was just writing as I was doing it. Will be interesting as to see how both your teams looked. I was annoyed early on as I couldn't get Robin Petersen or another good all-rounder that was available.
It's not hard to see who is the dominant side looking at that picture. Our outstanding players are quite obvious as well, with Ali taking both batting records, and Shakib both bowling ones.
In the trading period, Smith, Mason and Jayasuriya retired. Mason and Smith were losses to the side as they were both solid domestic players. I decided to only keep one of the departing players - my regen keeper who, while not being great, is better than Ben Cox. The rest all left, and I fired quite a lot of the dead wood who hadn't played in many matches. This left me with a decent amount of money (around 300k iirc) to spend on new players. I actually got a warning that I had released too many players but I pressed on regardless.
In the first round of trades I decided to go for a big name purchase, and Steven Finn was going pretty cheap so i snapped him up. As well as this I got a regen batsman and Niall O'Brien, who is a pretty solid keeper-batsman. The next round was spend consolidating my domestic players, and so I bought Boyd Rankin, Anthony Ireland and another regen batsman. For my next round, and one that would turn out to be my last (due to lack of funds), I bought Komasaru as my overseas player (a Sri Lankan spinner), Sehwag as my T20 player, and Vettori as my reserve overseas player. Spin is my side's weakness, hence the decision to reinforce it with an overseas spinner.
In the internationals played in the offseason, New Zealand won the World Cup by beating Australia in the semi final by 5 wickets, and India in the final by an amazing 1 wicket. The NZ side was rather weird, with Raval opening, Kitchen and Wells in the middle order, with Flynn at 8 and McSkimming and Gillespie in the side as well. Wells and Gillespie opened the bowling too :/ During the tournament there were a few upsets, with Bangladesh beating Australia, India, SL and England in group play, while also managing to lose to Namibia. The Ashes were retained by England 2-1, with the last two matches drawn.
My starting lineup for the first match will most likely look as follows:
Mitchell
Solanki *
Ali
Kervezee
O'Brien +
Lucas
Aimson
Finn ^
Komasaru ^
Ireland ^
Rankin ^
From the previous season's team, there are only 3 players who make the new side. On paper it looks much stronger however, and there are high hopes that this team will perform well.
And your bowling looks strong, probably would have looked at another batsman instead of Ireland/Rankin since you still have Arif on the bench who is good enough for the CC.
There were no decent cheap batsman on the TM. There were two who were like 80k+ and I didn't want to spend that much on one player. Luke Wright was there for 60k though and that did tempt me a bit. Arif was terrible for me though (well he was excellent with the bat, but terrible with the ball)
As I said throughout last season, my main goal was to get rid of the trash, which I've more or less done. I managed to sign 15 doemstic players and two international players, to form a squad of 17 players who I think will be able to compete a lot better this season compared to last season. As ICC does, they give you some trash players to make your squad up to the minimum squad size of 18 players, hence why I've written "18th man" next to Christopher Graham. Our batting unit this season is very young, but I think potential is the main thing, and hopefully most of them will mature this season. In terms of our bowling unit I did the opposite, and signed a couple of experience campaigners, all three with international experience. I still managed to chuck 30k on both coaching and physio, as well as 20k on youth team.
* Dan Christian - 27 (Pace) (T20 contract only)
David Wheeldon - 21 (Spin)
* Luke Wright - 26 (Pace)
Bowlers:-
Imran Arif - 27 (Pace)
* Mark Davies - 30 (Pace)
* Dewald Nel - 30 (Pace)
* Monty Panesar - 28 (Spin)
Alan Richardson - 35 (Pace)
Jack Shantry - 23 (Pace)
* = Internationally capped
- # = Age
Our major weakness is our all-round depth. In first-class cricket it shouldn't matter too much, but in one-day cricket if we lose Wright we'll be in real trouble.
I tried to pick up another domestic all-rounder, but after three offers he went elsewhere. All the other all-rounders left after that were rubbish, including the likes of Cameron and Leach who I released.
Gone:-
Shakib Al Hasan - Not resigned, was bloody hopeless (in terms of an international player) last season.
Gareth Andrew - Not resigned, didn't do enough last season.
James Cameron - Released from contract, didn't do enough last season.
Shaaiq Choudhry - Released from contract, didn't do enough last season.
Ben Cox - Released from contract, didn't do enough last season.
Phil Jacques - Not resigned, asking for way too much.
Sanath Jayasuriya - Retired.
Richard Jones - Not resigned, didn't do enough last season.
Joe Leach - Released from contract, didn't do enough last season.
Jack Manuel - Not resigned, didn't do enough last season.
Matthew Mason - Not resigned, it was a tough decision, but at 36 years of age I decided not to.
Matthew Pardoe - Not resigned, didn't do enough last season.
Neil Pinner - Not resigned, didn't do enough last season.
Chris Russell - Released from contract, didn't do enough last season.
Ben Smith - Retired.
Steven Smith - Not resigned, because of international commitments.
Chris Whelan - Released from contract, didn't do enough last season.
New recruits:-
Dan Christian
I needed another all-rounder, and after not being able to pick up a worthwhile domestic one, I could only afford an international one for the T20 tournament. I wanted someone who was 100% certain of being available for the whole T20 tournament, so I went with him.
Mark Davies
On price he's our marque signing, for 67k. A stunning first-class bowling average of 22, with a great limited overs bowling record as well. He'll be the leader of our bowling attack this season, after taking a bit of a gamble and not resigning 36 year old Matt Mason.
Christopher Graham
As I said earlier I only had enough money to get 17 players, and the player/players they give you to make your squad up to 18 players are utter garbage. He's very unlikely to play a game, as I don't think I'll have seven players injured or on international duty at the same time.
Eric Matthews
I pretty much signed him 100% on potential. He's yet to pass 100 in 20 domestic matches thus far, but a 2nd team average of over 80 speaks for itself.
Dewald Nel
The Scottish international is now the third highest payed Worcestershire player, with a salary of 52.5k. Like Davies he'll be a key part of our bowling attack this season, and also makes there some competition for the likely three fast bowling places this season, unlike last season where Arif, Mason and Richardson were lock-ins every match.
Monty Panesar
England's number two first-class spinner in real life, I'm not sure about in ICC however. He should be a very useful recruit after not resigning Shakib, for obvious reasons.
Jeet Raval
He made his debut for New Zealand over the last couple of months (in ICC) at the 2011 World Cup, and in seven matches he finished with an average of over 50, including a century in the quarter final against India, which New Zealand eventually went on to lose. I managed to pick him up very cheap as the contracts are done at the end of the previous season, and not the start of this season, for only 26k.
Luke Wright
Probably my marque signing, for 54k. He doesn't have a great record, but he's a more than capable batting all-rounder which we were looking for, who should be able to bat at six/seven and be used as a fifth bowling option. He'll also bring a wealth of experience to our very young batting line-up.
Likely playing XI:-
Note: I haven't looked at ICC's recommended playing XI via the ratings.
9th April 2011
Worcestershire vs Derbyshire
County Championship -D2
Playing XI’s
Worcestershire
1. Vikram Solanki
2. Daryl Mitchell
3. Moeen Ali
4. Alex Kervezee
5. Niall O'Brien
6. Anthony Aimson
7. Hugh Lucas
8. Chanaka Komasaru
9. Steven Finn
10. Anthony Ireland
11. Boyd Rankin
The biggest problem with this lineup is that the last four all average single digits in FC cricket
Derbyshire
1. Brett Pelser
2. Wayne Madsen
3. Garry Park
4. Wes Durston
5. Greg Smith
6. John Sadler
7. Lee Goddard
8. Jonathan Clare
9. Graham Wagg
10. Timothy Groenewald
11. Mark Footitt
Match Drawn
Man that was a close game. In the first innings they piled on the runs, despite some early breakthroughs. Sadler and Smith were incredibly annoying and we could only get them out for 539. In return we capitulated, with everyone getting out cheaply with the exception of Kervezee who played an aggressive counter-attacking knock. Following on, the batsman all batted really aggressively for some reason, with our run rate and well over 4 an over. Solanki and Mitchell both reached half centuries, while the next three batsmen all got starts. Aimson however was the star, playing well in partnership with O'Brien, and then rotating the strike extremely well with the tail, scoring at least 100 of his runs batting with the last 4 (who scored 20 all together). HIs knock was pretty amazing as we were bowled out for 540. Derbyshire decided to go for it, and this result in a number of early wickets as they tried to hit out. Eventually it came to the last over, with 9 required and 1 wicket remaining. Steven Finn was unable to take the last wicket however, and this exciting match ended in a draw. Because of our first innings collapse however, we only scored 5 points compared to Derbyshire's 11.
Well it's certainly going to be a lot more fun picking teams with all those big names replacing the former nonentities! I hope they perform for you like big names should!
I'm just going to allow myself one little reservation. Perhaps you can guess what it is...
WHELAN!!!!!!!!!!
I bet he was snapped up! He's gonna make some other team manager(s) very happy! Mark my words!
I don't know what you guys've got against him. On averages alone he makes the first-choice bowling attack in all formats (in the old squads this is).
9th April 2011
Worcestershire vs Northamptonshire
County Championship - D2
Teams:
Worcestershire
1. Stephen Moore
2. Vikram Solanki
3. Alex Kervezee*
4. Julian Stafford
5. Moeen Ali
6. Stuart Adler?
7. David Wheeldon
8. Calvin Flowers
9. Imran Arif
10. Jack Shantry
11. Boyd Rankin
Northamptonshire
1. Niall O'Brien?
2. Mal Loye
3. David Sales
4. Neil Robin
5. Stephen Peters
6. Andrew Hall
7. Elton Chigumbura
8. Vishal Tripathi
9. David Lucas
10. David Wigley
11. Lee Daggett
Toss:
Worcestershire won the toss and elected to bowl first
Northamptonshire - 241 all out
Mal Loye 93 (207)
Andrew Hall 40 (70)
Calvin Flowers 7/104 (26.4)
Imran Arif 2/55 (15)
Worcestershire - 163 all out
Stephen Moore 46 (80)
Calvin Flowers 20 (56)
Elton Chigumbura 6/52 (17.5)
David Lucas 2/43 (17)
Northamptonshire - 231 all out
David Sales 98 (180)
Niall O'Brien 48 (91)
Calvin Flowers 6/80 (26)
Jack Shantry 4/45 (21)
Worcestershire - 310/6
Julian Stafford 88 (196)
Stuart Adler 66 (188)
David Wheeldon 49* (151)
David Lucas 3/95 (33)
Elton Chigumbura 2/85 (37)
Worcestershire won by 4 wickets
MOTM:
Calvin Flowers (7/104, 6/80, 20 and 21*)
Points:
Worcestershire 19
Northamptonshire 4
Comments:
Great win to start the season. The loss of Daryl Mitchell to injury was a blow but we managed to win without him. Bowling first, Flowers was dominant with the ball, taking 7/104 after getting a surprise callup to South Africa's World Cup squad taking 14 wickets @ 14.07 in 5 matches. Anyway, going out to bat, the loss of Mitchell was really hurting us as we were knocked over for 163, 78 runs behind. Again it was Flowers who did the damage in their second innings, taking 6/80 while Shantry was very good as well taking 4/45 to bowl them out for 241.
Set a solid 310 for victory, it wasn't the best start to our innings when Solanki and Moore got out cheaply in single figures. Kervezee and Stafford though showed some strong resistance but the skipper finally went for 41. Ali didn't last too long and we had fallen to 4/122. Adler and Stafford were superb with the bat putting on a 64 run partnership before Stafford was dismissed for 88. I would have thought they hadn't done enough but Wheeldon was set to stay out there and support Adler as they put on a 94 run partnership before Adler got himself out for 66, but we only needed another 30 runs for victory. Wheeldon wasn't affected by the dismissal as he continued to defend as Flowers scored 21 of the 30 runs to win by 4 wickets, Wheeldon finishing 49*. Calvin Flowers, what a player.
Worcestershire vs Northamptonshire
County Championship - D2
9th April 2011
Teams:
Worcestershire
1. Jeet Raval
2. Daryl Mitchell*
3. Vikram Solanki
4. Alan Darbon
5. Eric Matthews
6. Luke Wright
7. Jeff Ingram?
8. Mark Davies
9. Dewald Nel
10. Monty Panesar
11. Alan Richardson
Northamptonshire
1. Mal Loye
2. Stephen Peters
3. David Sales
4. T... Wingfield
5. Andrew Hall*
6. Vishal Tripathi
7. Paul Harrison?
8. David Lucas
9. David Wigley
10. Lee Daggett
11. Jack Brooks
Toss:
Northamptonshire won the toss, and chose to bat first.
Match:
Northamptonshire - 307 all out
Andrew Hall 79
Stephen Peters 54
Lee Daggett 45
David Sales 41
Monty Panesar 5-66
Mark Davies 2-55
Alan Richardson 2-70
Worcestershire - 269 all out
Luke Wright 48
Vikram Solanki 47
Alan Darbon 40
David Wigley 4-55
Lee Daggett 2-38
Jack Brooks 2-53
David Lucas 2-65
Northamptonshire - 301 all out
Vishal Tripathi 56
Andrew Hall 52
David Sales 44
Mark Davies 5-62
Monty Panesar 3-82
Dewald Nel 2-56
Worcestershire - 246 for 7
Daryl Mitchell 76
David Lucas 2-50
Andrew Hall 2-50
Result:
Match Drawn
Points:
Northamptonshire 9
Worcestershire 8
MOTM:
Andrew Hall (79, 52, 2 wickets and 2 catches)
Reaction:
Overall a bit of a disappointing start to the season. We should have got them all out in their first innings for about 250, but 45 from their number ten was a killer innings. Our first innings was built around a lot of small contributions, but no one even managed to pass 50. At that stage if we'd rolled them cheaply in their second innings we'd have a good chance of winning the match, but yet again they passed 300, and set us 340 to win in a day and an over. It was going to be a tough proposition, but being only one down at lunch meant we were still realistically in the match. However our middle order collapsed just before tea, meaning a draw was all we had to gain out of the match. It was looking like a long shot at one stage, but a 130 ball 31 by Matthews and a 50 ball 8 by Nel brought the match to a tame finish.
Panesar and Davies were our only two bowlers to impress, as our other two seamers plus Wright struggled with five wickets from 92 overs of bowling. The off-season didn't do our batsmen any good, as our new captain Mitchell was the only one to pass 50 for us in the whole match.
I'm going to give everyone who failed another chance to perform, so no changes will be made for our second match.
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