CC v Yorks 22-25th August

Just bowl Coles and Carson. The gamre is lost due to totally inept Sussex batting in both innings.

Okay, so defeatism is now officially sanctioned by me! However on a day that the Seagulls beat Man Utd I’m not going to be too downhearted about it.

Please tell me they're not letting the opportunity to get the bowling points back pass them by

Possibly Joe, but don't forget two of the five wickets to fall were nightwatchmen. Plus, given the low target they were chasing I suspect their batters would have approached the run chase in a different way had they needed 200. Bairstow's shot selection being a case in point.

The bottom line is it was always going to be a really difficult fixture. We needed to be at our very best to get anything from it and Alsop aside (and to a slightly lesser extent Carson, Unadkat and Simpson), quite simply we were not.

Too many poor shots from our batters, one ridiculous run out that could have been three (Coles nearly run out Alsop in the first innings getting off the mark, Simpson (I think) nearly did the same to Alsop again in the second innings).

Three dropped catches in the Yorkshire first innings and an alarming drop off in quality between our opening seamers and first and second change.

Add to that the hindsight of playing the extra seamer being a mistake or alternatively playing the wrong extra seamer. I am not sure an extra batter, even if it was the right thing to do would have made a lot of difference given Carter has struggled to consistently score this season.

The positives are we are still top and I still believe we will go up, but not necessarily as Division Two winners. We have three home fixtures out of our remaining four, Middlesex and Yorkshire will take points off each other next week and weather permitting we have enough to get results against Derbyshire, Glamorgan and Gloucestershire.

It could get worse today.
Middlesex look primed to roll Northants over, who are missing one of their openers, two wickets down and still behind in their second innings.

I am bloody furious with how rubbish with the exception of Alsop and Carson we played here. Farbrasce needs to give the players a good kick up the backside.

I would say it was the one game we would likely have lost however we played.
I didn’t think we’d be that uncompetitive though and that standard won’t be enough next week.
Derbyshire just thrashed Glamorgan and are getting it together.

Results have been good this season but we rely heavily on a few players to win us games.
Robinson
MacAndrew/Seales
Pujara/Hughes
Simpson 
To a lesser extent Alsop, Haines (at the start of the season) and Coles. 
The key problem is we are putting out teams where 2 or 3 players are producing nadda.  FHP, Clark and Hunt did nothing in Scarborough which was no surprise . Coles had a terrible game but that’s not been typical of his season. 
And we now know there’s nothing much coming through the ranks, and the lack of depth is catching up with us. 
If we don’t go up, it will be for a reason or reasons. 
If we do, we will need to bring in a number of better players.