Story Brendon vs Callum vs Jono - A Worcestershire Battle

[hedger_14]

Off-Season Update​

Another season comes to an end and we needed to decide who to keep and who to sign for the new season. Daniel Vettori and Alan Richardson decided to retire, although we wouldn?t have re-signed Vettori anyway and Richardson was no major loss either. In the last year of their contracts were Shaaiq Choudhry, Daryl Mitchell, Vikram Solanki, David Wheeldon, Imran Arif, Chris Russell and our 2 other overseas players.

We decided to sign Choudhry, Mitchell, Arif and Russell on new deals as well as Pears and Norris in the youth team but let go Solanki, Leach and also decided to terminate Ben Cox?s contract. All accepted their contract offers and we now had 14 players in our squad, 7 batsman, 1 keeper, 1 all-rounder and 5 pace bowlers.

In the first round of the auction, we aimed for 3 domestic players. Wicket-keeper, Tim Ambrose, veteran spinner, Murtaza Hussain as a short term spinning prospect and middle order batsman, Garry Park. All accepted our offers and we were on to buy more players. We made an offer for Steven Kirby but we didn?t have much money left after that so we decided to aim for a reasonable OS player and a cheap T20 overseas player. We tried to get Jeet Raval very cheap but we couldn?t so we decided to go for Shahid Afridi at a cheap price, hoping for his all-round skills to come in handy.

We got him cheap in the end and that allowed us $16,000 plus anything we wanted to spare on physio/youth/coaching to spend on a T20 player. I decided to free up $20,000 from physio and we managed to snatch up South African opener, Brett Pelser for $34,000 on a T20 contract. So the squad for the new season was slightly stronger than last but would it be good enough to last in Division 1.

Batsman:

Moeen Ali
Shaaiq Choudhry
Alex Kervezee (Captain)
Daryl Mitchell (Vice Captain)
Julian Stafford
Stephen Moore
Jeff Norris
Garry Park
Brett Pelser (T20 Only)


Keepers:

Stuart Adler
Tim Ambrose



All-Rounders:

David Wheeldon
Shahid Afridi (Overseas Player)


Bowlers:

Imran Arif
Chris Russell
Jack Shantry
Boyd Rankin
Christopher Pears
Murtaza Hussain
Steven Kirby

Bold = New Players



Probable XI:

1. Stephen Moore
2. Daryl Mitchell
3. Jeff Norris
4. Alex Kervezee*
5. Garry Park/Julian Stafford
6. Stuart Adler+
7. Shahid Afridi
8. Murtaza Hussain
9. Christopher Pears
10. Steven Kirby
11. Boyd Rankin​

 

[CG123]

I'm just posting now so you can post your thoughts on what to do next, without them joining with that post.

 

[hedger_14]

Ok, well idk. tbh, I'm not sure whether I'd want to start again or anything. I'll happily continue this but if we're not going to, then I was going to actually do a story on this and in the end, I wouldn't have much time for a new game. You's can do a new game against each other though.

 

[CG123]

I'm kind of with you, I'm happy to continue with this, but I'd be keen to do maybe monthly updates so we can continue to advance it.

What do you think Jono?

 

[Chewie]

I don't really care Basically I'll just do whatever you two feel like doing. Competing with other people in this has made it much more interesting

 

[hedger_14]

Monthly updates sounds fine for me.

 

[Chewie]

Yep sure.

 

[CG123]

Ok, so the season's six months long (hence six updates), so maybe try to do one every two weeks?

 

[hedger_14]

I'll try not to play it too quickly

I'll probably get through an update in a week.

So what do you think with monthly updates, just have match results with innings performances (Like what we post normally for the matches without lineups and MOTM, points etc.) and then a review sort of thing for the month.

 

[Chewie]

Yea won't take me long to play through, especially if I'm just taking screenshots after each match. I could probably do one a week, unless I get really bored and feel like procrastinating.

 

[CG123]

I'm just going to post like one/two line per match, for example:

17th August (CT group match) - Worcestershire 123 beat Durham 122 by 1 run
18th August (CC division two) - Worcestershire 978 and 123 beat Durham 123 and 123 by whatever runs
25th August (CT group match) - Worcestershire 321 (Davies 100*) beat Durham 123 (Davies 5-25) by whatever runs

And then at the end of the month do a small review.

I might do a bit more detail, but I'm not going to be posting much.

 

[hedger_14]

Doesn't procrastinating lead to playing ICC??

At least it does for me, I normally decide to put off doing homework by playing ICC

Actually, yeah, that's a pretty good idea Callum. I'll just take a random game from last season as an example for a match and post what I would do.

4th May (CC D2) - Worcestershire 385 a.o. (Moore 149, Arif 45, Chapple 3/48) and 71/0 (Mitchell 38*, Moore 25*) def. Lancashire 326 a.o. (Chilton 89, Benton 66*, Arif 5/80, Flowers 5/106) and 129 a.o. (Horton 34, Flowers 8/39) by 10 wickets


Anyway, I think I'll play my first match now and see how I go with my new squad.

----------

Well Stuart Adler made his Test debut in the first test against India where he batted at 7 and was chosen as a keeper over Kieswetter who was also in the team. He scored 22 and 12 and took 2 catches and a stumping.

And Julian Stafford is injured for the start of the new season.

 

[Chewie]

Yea I meant get bored of doing my work and procrastinating by playing ICC

I might play my first month now...

 

[hedger_14]

Well just played my first match and even though it was a university game, 2 of our debutants starred, Park scoring an unbeaten run a ball century and Hussain took 6/59 in their first innings. Afridi also took 4/53 in their first innings.

 

[hedger_14]

April 2012 Update​

10th April (University Match) - Worcestershire 472/8 dec. (Park 106*, Adler 92, Mitchell 89, Moore 84, Adamson 4/75) def. Loughboro UCCE 214 a.o. (Hussain 6/59, Afridi 4/53) and 166 a.o. (Pears 6/49, Rankin 3/34) by an innings and 92 runs


15th April (CC D1) - Glamorgan 197 a.o. (Dalrymple 78, Rankin 4/88, Pears 4/61) and 406 a.o. (Bragg 107, Elgar 85, Mitchell 4/35, Pears 4/106) drew Worcestershire 300 a.o. (Kervezee 109, Pears 55, Harris 5/84) and 166/4 (Park 55, Norris 44, Allenby 2/54)


21st April (CC D1) - Worcestershire 177 a.o. (Park 65, Sidebottom 4/62, Broad 3/38) and 294 a.o. (Choudhry 97, Norris 72, Sidebottom 5/74) def. Nottinghamshire 215 a.o. (Wagh 56, Arif 4/63, Hussain 3/40, Pears 3/70) and 205 a.o. (Hales 69, Wood 63, Rankin 6/42, Arif 3/40) by 51 runs


27th April (CC D1) - Worcestershire 420 a.o. (Park 131, Norris 59, Choudhry 54) and 15/0 def. Warwickshire 195 a.o. (Barrie 56, Afridi 5/47) and 239 a.o. (Barrie 38, Pears 3/61, Afridi 2/31) by 10 wickets


Monthly Review:

Well a very promising opening month in the top division, with a pleasing victory over Nottinghamshire and a win against Warwickshire as well although we would have liked to beat Glamorgan as well after bowling them out for 197 in their first innings but we couldn't finish things off. Garry Park was the man to watch throughout the month as he made important runs in every game, with scores of 106*, 15, 55, 65, 24 and 131, a total of 396 runs already. A big blow was Moore being ruled out with injury after the first CC match with scores of 84, 41 and 29* in the 3 innings that he played. Stafford also came back into the squad for the last game only to suffer yet another injury. Murtaza Hussain had been a star player with the ball though, having taken 15 wickets @ 21.67 so far.

There were a few disappointments though, with Daryl Mitchell yet to score in double figures in any CC matches, after having made 89 in the University game. Adler was also yet to make a half century since the warmup matches with a series of starts but was unable to go on with any of them, Steven Kirby who only managed to take 1 wicket in his 2 matches, including the University match with figures of 0/54, 0/24, 0/23 and 1/102 and Shahid Afridi who had been the biggest fail with the bat, scoring 48 runs in 6 innings and hadn't done much with the ball apart from his 4 wickets in the University match and his 5/47 against Warwickshire.

We now have 2 more County Championship matches against tough teams in Durham and Essex before we play 3 Challenge Trophy matches in 3 days and then another 2 CC games and 3 OD games before the end of the month so it will be a busy month ofr us with 10 matches.