So much for Twenty20 revitalising Glamorgan's season.
If Monday night's performance at Taunton is anything to go by, it has only demoralised the team further. They looked a dispirited, dejected bunch for the second time in three days as they conceded 200 in the field for a second time as well.
A side's fielding usually tells you much about its spirit and character and Glamorgan's effort in that department against Somerset was woeful.
It was not just the dropped catches (and they were shelled by usually good fielders like Mike Powell and David Hemp) but the ground fielding, which was sloppy and lacking in energy.
The side looks as if it has forgotten how to win (and they did not know about their only Twenty 20 victory - with scores level against Somerset in their first match- until afterwards!) That is not nice for anyone.
Matthew Elliott made some interesting comments this week; basically intimating that Glamorgan might not have been so good a one-day side as many people thought last season- even suggesting that they might have been a little lucky to have won the totesport League.
I'm not sure about that but I do know that the team relied more on Elliott than a lot of people realised. To expect him to repeat such heroics this season was unfair.
Time after time last season I was at one-day games when I knew that if Elliott got out Glamorgan would be doomed.
He never seemed to, and so Glamorgan prospered.
Having said that the bowling has been dire this term.
They are lacking their old head in Mike Kasprowicz, and paying the price.
Poor Darren Thomas must be taken out of the firing line for a while.
He is so lacking confidence that it does not make for pleasant viewing watching him bowl. Quite why he keeps being entrusted with the final over of the innings I do not know.
At least he has been left out for this evening's match at Edgbaston.
But so has Ian Thomas, and I reckon that is a little harsh.
He was batted out of position in the Twenty20 matches he has played.
He should bat in the top three where he can take advantage of the fielding restrictions. He is a powerful striker of the ball and has shown before that he can get Glamorgan off to a flying start in one-day cricket.
Taunton was an ideal opportunity to put him up the order because he had scored a hundred at the ground last season but instead he was forced to do a job with which he is unfamiliar. That he got run out was no surprise. With all due respect he is no scamperer between the wickets.
In my opinion Sourav Ganguly played two very poor innings at Swansea and Taunton.
He seemed to struggle with the general concept of Twenty20 cricket, playing out far too many dot balls.
Yes, he played some fine shots too (he is a high-quality international batsman after all) but he put too much pressure on his colleagues. When the required scoring rate begins at somewhere above 10 an over, you do not want that to rise too much when your supposedly best player is batting.
If he can only score at six an over how are the other players who follow him supposed to score at fourteen? Maybe Glamorgan need to show a bit more of the spirit shown by Simon Jones against Australia at Edgbaston on Tuesday.
He was involved in the first flashpoint of the Ashes summer when he threw a ball back at Matthew Hayden. The Australian reacted angrily despite an apology from Jones and a host of England players rushed in to give Hayden the benefit of their advice; Paul Collingwood even seeming to be involved in the merest hint of contact as he went shoulder-to-shoulder with the hulking Australian.
It was rather unseemly and, as skipper Michael Vaughan conceded afterwards, probably should not have happened, but it did show that England will not be intimidated by the Australians this summer.
What was probably just as instructive was how Jones bowled with the new ball and his dismissal of Hayden with a ball which looked to shape away and then nipped back to trap him palpably leg-before.
Hayden had spent four overs on the same score after the altercation, so maybe the self-styled enforcer of the Australian side was rattled. Who knows? We've got one last chance for psychological points to be made in Saturday's NatWest series final before the real thing begins with the first Test on July 21.
Personally I cannot wait. The phoney war has been going on too long.
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