<subs: insert title here> : County Cricket 2022

[longeared]

A depressing (and completely deserved) end to the most abysmal 12 months in Yorkshire cricket history. No doubt this will sadly add fuel to the fire of those among our support who think a terrible injustice was done with the removal of the former coaching staff.

I've not been to a single day's play this season for the first time who knows how long (other than the first pandemic summer) and have barely even followed things either; my heart's just not in it at all, which I feel terribly sad about. Hopefully the club will use the off season to make more positive changes to show it's genuinely serious about operating in the right way, and maybe I'll be more enthused to support a new-look team next year with Shan Masood as skipper.

Yeah, every word of this. Steve "BHS auditor" Denison has already popped up in the Yorkshire Post (obviously they're going to give him a platform, Graves will be given space in there next week) to say that Lord Patel should quit, Azeem Rafiq is an unreliable troublemaker and they should never have sacked all the coaching staff, which seems to be a real cause celebre, honestly you'd think Gale was any good at actual coaching apart from the racism. There will doubtless be a lot of bloodletting over the winter regardless, what with the ECB racism hearings ahead. Hopefully the Shan Masood appointment means they're going to double down on change, and they're not going to bring back the old guard in any way. Go on ECB, threaten them with removal of the Ashes Test...

They have had a bit of bad luck though, there was a conscious if unspoken decision to ensure that they went for overseas players from Pakistan and the Windies for reasons of optics rather than fair dinkum Aussies or 30something South Africans, and unfortunately they haven't contributed a huge amount. Then Brook scored a bucketload of runs which camouflaged the deficiencies in the batting and he got whisked off by England, presumably not to be seen again until 2032.

I haven't been at all this season either, there was a Saturday in the early summer where they were at home, it was a nice day and I thought "nah, fuck it, they're not getting eighteen quid of my money", I missed Joe Root scoring a ton and wasn't terribly bothered.

[Sporting]

Just by the by, which clubs up to the present day have spent most consecutive seasons in each division? There seem to be quite a few yo-yo teams.

[Levin]

Well, that turned out alright in the end

[Tony C]

The Yorkshire Post sounding unsurprisingly bitter here:

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/spor...waters-3861999

A couple of comments stood out;

“my belief is that the club has been wilfully and wrongly taken down by narcissists”

I genuinely don’t know what he means here. Who are the narcissists? The game’s ruling body who have an expectation that a player shouldn’t be racially abused at his place of work? If not them, then who?

“Even if everything that Azeem Rafiq claimed was true, a strong argument could be made that Patel has acted with greater immorality ”

“Even if.” Rafiq’s claims being instinctively questioned and undermined. As for the rest of the sentence I assume it’s just clumsy grammar that points to the idea that Rafiq has somehow acted with “immorality” and that Patel’s handling of the matter has exceeded him. But if not Rafiq then whose immorality is he referring to?

A desperately poor and ill judged article altogether from a writer whose complete lack of self awareness doesn’t reflect well on the club at all.

[longeared]

I'm not going to give them the click on that article, but Waters has consistently been on the side of the old establishment and against Rafiq / Patel through the whole process. He's not worth bothering with.

[Ray de Galles]

Any thoughts on this?

https://twitter.com/barneyronay/status/1575745399653924864?s=21&t=kBPgOW4yiQkJD11HaHzqcw

[Etienne]

I'd thought that Root plays enough cricket to warrant a break, and wasn't too bothered by this story until I just saw the photo and realised who he was playing golf with.

[ad hoc]

Who are the other two? I recognise Vaughan. Is it Piers Morgan? Fucking hell

[Etienne]

And Pietersen.

[ad hoc]

Christ. Imagine the nightmare of being in their company for 2?3? hours and having no easy escape

[San Bernardhinault]

That looks like he's deliberately punishing himself for missing the match.

[Tony C]

I'd thought that Root plays enough cricket to warrant a break...

Ordinarily I’d have said the same, but this was a match to decide relegation and I can imagine that Yorkshire fans might have thought Root could go the extra yard for his county on this occasion.

[Tony C]

Christ. Imagine the nightmare of being in their company for 2?3? hours and having no easy escape

Years ago I was at a book festival and Vaughan was plugging an autobiography via signings and a Q & A session that I attended. He was very enjoyable, with engaging anecdotes and progressive ideas on the future of the game. No sign at all of the UKIP friendly persona that now seems to be the trademark of his online activity. God knows what happened.

[longeared]

Yorkshire don't really expect to see Root given that he's a centrally contracted all format player, especially outside of the months of April and May when he comes and gets in tune while the IPL is on. He hasn't appeared for the county later than the schools have broken up since 2014. In this particular situation it wouldn't have been a great vote of confidence in the existing staff if county or player had demanded his presence, especially given that it was a home match against a team who had won once all season.

The Rashid comparison in the subtweet is an interesting one. That was the title showdown against Middlesex at Lords and it became known a few days before that Rashid wouldn't be playing even though he was available. Gale (him again) was captain at the time and put out a tweet saying he had "asked to be rested" with no further elaboration. For family privacy I can understand why there wasn't full detail given, but there wasn't even an accompanying "personal reasons" or anything, we were just invited to draw the inference that Rashid couldn't be arsed to play in the big match because he was saving himself for the England winter tour. Institutional racism in action, you might conclude.

[Tony C]

Well, yes. Choices of words matter…

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/20...et-second-test

[all new noj]

That Yorkshire Post article is a shocker. But sadly, its not surprising. George Dobell rightly going after James Mitchinson (the Y/L Post editor) on twitter at the moment who has now gone quiet.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeDobell1/st..._ARlf4Atw&s=19

[all new noj]

Away from all that, great effort for Derbyshire once again from Wayne Madsen who finishes the season as the highest run scorer in either division of the County Championship. Sam Conners is the youngest bowler to get 50 wickets this season in the championship too. And finally a really good season from Anuj Dal - nearly 1,000 runs batting at 7 and 8 and took over 30 wickets. The latter two should really get Lions gigs this winter.

[Etienne]

Glamorgan gave a massive farewell to Michael Hogan this season, he was retiring and going back to Australia after a decade of sterling service to us. Only, he's just changed his mind and signed a one year contract with Kent. No issue with him, he doesn't owe Glamorgan anything and he's entitled to change his mind. But it does make the county look a bit silly.

It does put Hogan's world record at risk - in a long career of 380 professional matches, he's never been LBW.

[Etienne]

https://twitter.com/voigthill/status...0BkhAdfXvg29XQ