| What next for Derbyshire?
I don't think many people would disagree that Derbyshire are comfortably the worst of the 18 first class counties. I am starting this thread to get everyone's opinion on what you think is wrong at the Cricket Club and what needs to be changed to put it right. We haven't always been this bad and in recent times we have supplied England with Cork, Malcolm and DeFreitas (occasionally at the same time) as well as John Morris, Chris Adams and Kim Barnett. In 1996, with Dean Jones in his first season of captaincy, we actually came second in the county championship and our team would regularly line up as Barnett, Rollins, Adams, Jones, O'Gorman, Wells, Cork, Krikken, DeFreitas, Malcolm, Harris. That season Adams (1590), Barnett (1436) and Jones (1338) score over a 1000 county championship runs while Cork, Krikken, Wells and Rollins joined them with very healthy batting averages. In all that season 20 centuries were score in the championship by Derbyshire players with Adams (6) and Jones (4) responsible for half of them. The bowling was also impressive with Malcolm 73 wickets in 16 games, DeFreitas 62 wickets in 13 games, young Harris with 48 wickets in 11 games and Cork with 35 wickets in 11 games forming an excellent attack. This side looked fantastic and it seemed it could go to the next level. Since then we have gone further and further down hill. The following season Dean Jones left - I believe after team disagreements with Cork - and we have steadily got worse and worse.
This season we are yet to win a county championship game (and have amazingly gone 3 years without a home win in the county game) and only have one player with over 1000 runs - Di Venuto with 1133, Moss and Stubbings are the next most prolific with 742 runs. We have only made 7 centuries (Di Venuto has 3) and a total of 33 half centuries shows a poor conversion rate. The bowling is no better and only the veteren all rounder - Welch - can hold his head up with 48 wickets at 24. None of the other regular bowlers average under 35 or have taken more than 35 wickets. Basically we are poor but what can be done?
The problems are, as I see it,
Players Leaving the county - Derbyshire have, more than any other county I think a reputation for letting players join other counties while at the height of their powers. In recent years I would list Kim Barnett, Adrian Rollins, Peter Bowler, Chris Adams, John Morris, Dean Jones, Ian Blackwell, Dominic Cork, Phillip De Freitas and Devon Malcolm. You can now add Luke Sutton, who leaves for personal reasons at the end of this summer and you have a good team. You can add Harris as twelfth man as well. Why is this allowed to happen.
Spin bowling - In all of my years supporting Derbyshire I can never remember a decent, successful spinner playing for us. I know Derbyshire's ground used to be considered a seamers dream - I read the other day that in the mid nineties one run at Derbyshire was considered 1 and a half runs elsewhere such was the bias towards seam bowling. Is this why spinners don't thrive? I feel that to progress we need a good spin bowler (Chris Paget?) to give us a more varied attack. We currently have Andrew Gray and Ant Botha in the side but neither are pulling up any trees.
Finance - I would guess that Derbyshire are one of the poorer counties but this won't change until we start having some success, how do you attract sponsorship to the worst team in the country? Are we doing enough behind the scenes to make funds available for team building?
The current team is not good enough - Too many of the current team have played for too long with out success. Using Steve Stubbings as an example it shows that a player can underachieve season after season and get new contracts. Stubbings is currently 27 and made his debut 8 years ago. He currently averages 30.35 in first class cricket from 85 games (155 innings). This includes only 7 centuries (one every 22 innings) and 25 half centuries (a conversion rate of 22%). His one day career has been no more impressive and he only averages 23.82 in 82 games and is a notoriously a slow scorer. This to me is not good enough. Looking deeper into his stats you can see that in 5 seasons as a regular he has only got 1000 first class runs once (2001 - 1047 - this was also the season he posted his highest average 33.77). Is this the form of a opening batsman? At 27 is he likely to get any better? Next up lets take Kevin Dean, he will be 30 in October so again he is no spring chicken. My problem with Dean is not is he good enough - he has played 100 first class matches, taking 358 wickets at 25.65 - but does he play enough. Unfortunately for Dean and Derbyshire he is very injury prone. Dean has been considered a first choice player since 1996 (10 seasons) and has only played 100 first class games. In 4 seasons (1999, 2001, 2004 and 2005) he has only totalled 22 games. As much as admire him and feel if he had been fit he would have become a top county bowler he is rarely fit and his salary could be used to bring a regular, fit, young bowler. I could go further, our team is littered with players nearing 30 who have still to prove themselves as county standard players.
I think it will be a long road back for Derbyshire, if we ever come back. I personally think that we should go with the youth players that we are constantly being told about. Every time an England age group side is named the Derby paper reports how 2 or 3 or 4 of our players are included. We should blood these players and gradually fade out the older, never made its. This would be a difficult process and I would guess that we might go backwards initially but I feel Derbyshire needs to brand itself as the best at something. If we can get a reputation of blooding young, English qualified cricketers it could be counter productive and mean that the best young players want to sign for us. This backed up by two quality overseas players (Di Venuto and a good bowler) would help bring them through.
What do you think of this? How do you think we need to move forward?
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Steven |