Stewie on Sky Sports Vodcast

Addresses pretty much everything, most notable topics given discussions on here :
- Club v Franchise, very interesting discussion of Jacks and Atkinson winter decisions.
- England summer scheduling including "The 100 is going nowhere".
- Oval pitches and spin.
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If Jacks had been in the squad ahead of Bashir he would have played.

I can imagine "discussions" with Stewart could be quite heated, I'm not sure i'd want to contradict his suggestions....
I'm not sure if he clarified if all the squad had these discussions because there are one or two players (surname Curran springs to mind) who seem to have played in every overseas white ball tournament since the Hundred ended last August. They've all been out in Pakistan this last month, before that South Africa and Dubai, and before that the Big Bash in Australia and for the likes of Topley and Sam Curran the ODI World Cup in India. Will they be resting in the week between the IPL and the T20 World Cup in June?

Very interesting. Alec's blueprint for the season is a step in the right direction, but doesn't totally deal with the problem. In summary:

- he believes that we need to preserve a 14-game championship (strongly agree, as a minimum)
- he believes that the 50-over group games need to be moved to the very start of the season, allowing the championship to start at the end of April (agree)
-  he suggests truncating the time-window for both of the white-ball competitions, but doesn't seem to challenge the franchise model. I believe that there is only space for one white-ball tournament in our season (quality over quantity...) and that it should be played by the counties. The franchises should be disbanded.

There are currently three white-ball competitions.

Incidentally, I was interested to hear that Alec believes Tom Lawes will eventually be good enough to bat at 6-7, and made the point that he doesn't want to see that part of his game become marginalised. I would certainly be comfortable to see him slotting in at 8 this year.

I think there was a question about Bazball and our openers being the least bazzball on the county circuit. Stewart said in as many words some players don't hit sixes but pick off 1s and 2s and punish the odd bad ball for 4 ( ie Burns) but Sibley has the game to be anything he wants. I think he said he'd rather see players getting out doing something rather than nothing.

Does sound like Sibley had come back looking good in our "marquee" in last few weeks.

What Stewart said was along the lines of - Dom Sibley, what we have seen in the Marquee since March, he's been incredible, you wouldn't believe that player is Dom Sibley, what he needs to do is take that positivity into the Championship, he just needs to free himself up. - said he first saw him as a 12 year old and he's a player who can play all the shots has the technique..

Peter.M.Gardens wrote:I think there was a question about Bazball and our openers being the least bazzball on the county circuit. Stewart said in as many words some players don't hit sixes but pick off 1s and 2s and punish the odd bad ball for 4 ( ie Burns) but Sibley has the game to be anything he wants. I think he said he'd rather see players getting out doing something rather than nothing.

Does sound like Sibley had come back looking good in our "marquee" in last few weeks.

Well, if Sibbers comes out belting the ball around the ground this year it would be the biggest transformation since Ebenezer Scrooge!  I'd happily settle for him playing to his strengths within the realms of the pos'Sib-ball', playing the sort of innings he played at Canterbury to win/save us a few matches, and with perhaps just a tad fewer single-figure dismissals than last year.

Jackers wrote:
Well, if Sibbers comes out belting the ball around the ground this year it would be the biggest transformation since Ebenezer Scrooge!  I'd happily settle for him playing to his strengths within the realms of the pos'Sib-ball', playing the sort of innings he played at Canterbury to win/save us a few matches, and with perhaps just a tad fewer single-figure dismissals than last year.

We do need someone at the top order to stick around for us to build a total, perhaps occasionally score beyond 200 before we lose our 5th wicket and not always rely on a couple of our bowlers hitting a quick 50 or so.

Afterall our top individual score last season was Cameron Steels 141 coming in to bat at number 7. Neither of our openers hit a century in the 1st innings of any of our 14 matches last season.

Peter.M.Gardens wrote:

Afterall our top individual score last season was Cameron Steel's 141 coming in to bat at number 7. Neither of our openers hit a century in the 1st innings of any of our 14 matches last season.

Blimey, that is some stat.  You would have thought that, chasing 500+, someone would have made more than that.