At the moment its green for my medium pacers, but given my best bowler is a spinner and I have a 17yo in training who should reach wonderful bowling before hes 20 as another spinner I think I will be switching to dusty myself.

Training wont have that much effect for me for the next couple of years now. Out of the 5 players Im training, only Lawrence is playing regular competitive games. Ideally in 3 seasons though, him Swartz and daley will all be Quality/Remarkable and scoring most of my runs. Pity my next wave of seamers isnt going to be as good (only strong/superb) but I am trying to keep going with this side in the knowledge that when my trainees reach 20 I can bump up the standard massively in one go. I think if I can get promoted to iii I should be able to stay there, theres 2 problems I have to overcome though, winning the league which is no means guaranteed yet, then the qualifier I will almost certainly have, probably with a very tired squad.

I'm not so sure you'll need to face qualifier Statto, aside from the tie you had early-season you have been winning games well and I think morale will help you through. You can TIE against the bottom teams and so your fitness against the top teams should give you even more of an edge. I don't know what your league is really like, but ours is one in which any of the top four can beat anyone else, with ourselves having just been stronger than most, but if it isn't like that then you look good to win all your remaining games. If we win IV.8 we'll definitely face a qualifier, having lost 2 games now, but we'll see how it goes.

Regarding training, we have 8 players training as we keep on seeking to build up the squad, 6 of whom are first teamers. Murdoch is going to be a very useful bat in time, though he still needs to improve his concentration a lot. We have two promising bowlers, Acton (RH Spin) and Rees (RM), who should break through next season. It might be the case that we start training a new all-rounder at the start of next season when a couple of nets free up. Our policy to date has been to introduce trainees into the team as soon as they surpass existing players in ability and have performed in a few friendlies.

Our league is very even as well, the team I rate as the best is in 4th, I expected to be 3rd and am 1st, and a team I thought would be 4th or 5th is 7th. I dont really have any easy games that I know I can win TIEing, so Im worried about the efects of fitness if I reach a playoff.

You could definitely win TIEing against the bottom two. I know you tied with SteelBears early-season, but their morale will be way down now after losing 5 games. Padding Up look like a walkover even on a TIE, and even if you didn't TIE against SteelBears the fitness boost from the one game alone could prove vital.

We have two games we could TIE on, Scotland who are now a bot team sadly, and The Only Way Is Up, though it'll have to be nearer the time before a decision is made on that. I'll correct myself from earlier though, it is competitive down to 5 in our league, with Young Boys Burn being champions, though as I said before I genuinely believe us to be the best side with Thornley a close second.

Do you want Sundays game as full sides again?

Your reserves would wallop ours, so yes! We can leave more friendlies until another day after this.

I won by 5 wickets again, but chasing a higher score. Didnt see any of the match but it looks like you plodded through the first 40 overs not losing wickets but not smashing it around too much, then upped the run rate quite a bit towards the end. I had experimented with the orders today, and can safely say they didnt have the desired effect, particularly Ogrady and Nkoes. I think thats the first side I havent bowled out all season so it was a good effeort by your top order.

Thanks, I was expecting Adu to bounce back with a retaliatory hundred, I just wish Beattie had got out after his fifty and given Rajesh and Murdoch the chance to smash it around and get us over 250, instead of playing out maidens! 250+ on our pitch is notoriously hard to chase. Wright got carted with his bowling but his batting often makes up for it - not this time though! Antoine bowled excellently as usual and Murdoch has today popped to Strong bowling.

Janes bowled well again for you guys and they were all very tight aside from Nkoe. What level is O'Grady? If he's your spinner and you get a Remarkable rating then he must be pretty good!

Ogrady is Quality/Superb with respectable stamina. He should really have made the first England U19 squad but at the time I was reluctant to put too many nets on him, so he only had 1 bowling and a bit of stamina. Janes is the worst bowler, but also the best batsman but his bowling form doesnt reflect that, and Ive found a role that suits him. When FC games come around he will probably only be an occasional bowler, especially as Daley may come in so I can go with a 2 pronged spin attack.