Into The Bear Pit
Jim Troughton offers his thoughts on Warwickshire’s FP t20 campaign to date.
We’ve had a bit of a frustrating time of it in our last two Twenty20 fixtures, narrowly losing out against Durham after we’d put on a really good run-chase and then getting into a strong position against Lancashire only for the rain to come and prevent us from forcing a win that would have put us right up there at the top.
Sadly it wasn’t to be, and frankly you can’t complain too much about these things – the weather doesn’t play favourites after all! And there are still plenty of games left in what is an extremely long competition, so everything should balance itself out in the end.
We’re about to lose Ian Bell, who is off to join up with the England one-day squad. Everyone knows what a talent he is and he’s been in excellent form in recent weeks, as evidenced by his two brilliant half-centuries against Derby and Durham, so the rest of us batters are going to have to ensure that we put in some big scores so we don’t end up missing him too badly. Jonathan Trott was really unlucky to miss out on joining Bell in the England squad, but their loss is our gain. Trotty was the leading Twenty20 run-scorer last season and is a serious batsman. No doubt he’ll be looking to play some big knocks and remind the selectors just what they’re missing out on!
From a personal perspective I’m quietly pleased with how things are going. I’ve dropped down from three to four to accommodate Belly, but with him now away I might find myself back up the order. But frankly little tweaks to the batting line-up like that don’t really make much of a difference in Twenty20; it’s the sort of game where you’re just as likely to find yourself coming to the crease in the first over as in the 19th, so it’s not much of an issue.
In terms of my batting strategy, I’m not really looking to do much different from what I did last year. Basically I look to hit hard and straight as often as I can whilst looking to exploit my favoured hitting areas whenever the field and delivery allows. But within that approach you can make a few adjustments. For example, if you’re in during the first six overs when the fielding restrictions are on and it’s a good deck, I would probably look to use my feet to the seamers and create angles that help me to get the ball through the infield, because if you get a decent amount of bat on the ball you’re likely to pick up a four.
When the spinners come on, I know I’ve got the option to hit them back over their head or start playing the slog sweep, which will hopefully make them drop their length back and then I can start thinking about cutting them. It’s basically all about out-guessing the bowler.
As you get further along the innings the field starts to spread, so whilst you’re looking to still hit fours and sixes, a key skill is looking for areas where you can pick up twos, because they can really kill a team; if you get three twos in an over and then hit a boundary you end up with a pretty damaging over without having to take too many risks, and that is the key to big scores.
Looking ahead, we’ve got some important games coming up. We first take on Notts, who are a team we haven’t played a lot in one-day cricket. Dirk Nannes, their Australian overseas bowler, is an important figure for him so we’re going to have to get our thinking caps on about how we combat him. Then we’ve got our derby game against Worcestershire, a team that we know well and always look forward to playing against. It should be a good entertaining match played in a lively atmosphere. We know they’ve signed Steve Smith, the Australian leg-spinner, who could have a big impact, and they’ve also got Moeen Ali, our former Bear, in their line-up. He’s a talented player who has been hitting it well recently, so we’re going to have to figure a way of stopping him from getting runs. That’s the plan anyhow…
