stevegrant

In fairness, I don't think there are as many obvious standout players in the current squad compared to previous years who would definitely get pinched by WSL or monied WSL2 teams this summer. Given her England U23 status I guess Meg Collett is potentially next in line but there are quite a few of the squad who are at the end of their two-year contract cycles and therefore might be getting better offers from elsewhere. The men's team performance will have a bearing too, fairly clear that the club's Premier League status (or otherwise) will be a driving factor in the women's budget. Agree that Pompey getting relegated is a bad thing for us - unless we get an interesting draw in the cups it means there's no real headline games next season.

More testing.

Testing

Working on it... basically we had a huge amount of DDoS-looking traffic that was bringing the servers down and costing me a fuckton of money, so I've implemented much stricter firewall restrictions, but that seems to have had this knock-on effect.

Somerset will surely be due one for their game against Durham that was done in 5 sessions, and would imagine their penalty will (should) be much bigger. Not that it makes any tangible difference to anything, really. 10% chance of rain in Taunton, so we're going to have to bat all day, which feels somewhat unlikely. One bugbear of mine, they went off for bad light as soon as Orr was given out LBW last night. The light doesn't turn in the space of one delivery, so were the umpires just hoping to get through to the end of the over before calling play off, or did they only think "ooh, bit dark now" after the fall of the wicket? Going in this morning 0 down compared to 1 might (unlikely, but might) prove the difference...

Think it would be doable if you had enough players with the right qualities, as you'd then be able to make use of the fact you can sub half your outfielders if you so choose and have four players going full pelt for 45 minutes each.

You would essentially end up with the Hasenhuttl 4-2-2-2 out of possession, but something a bit more expansive in possession. Theoretically doable but you'd be exhausting your wide players who would need to be able to operate centrally too.

Not sure what he expected, it's been a spinner's wicket for years! Somerset were 99/5, so now all we've got to do is put on a 250-run partnership and everything is fine...

Looks like a round of draws here, perhaps with the exception at the Oval in what might be a title decider. Difficult to see Surrey getting 300 in these conditions.

Eagerly awaiting the sanction handed down to Somerset for their pitch transgressions this season... Anyway, we've been beaten by the rain in Hove, fairly certain we'd have won that game if we'd been able to get the overs in, so that's annoying. Also annoyingly, Durham were saved by the rain at Chelmsford, so we are now only 6 points clear of the drop zone, and they play Worcestershire next week. We finish against two of the top three, which isn't ideal.

Fuller played a couple of the group stage games, so there's nothing untoward with him being picked IMO. Dawson is a little bit more on the sly side, but if he's available and willing, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. Bit unfortunate for whoever misses out to fit him in, but it's a squad game these days.

20 overs of Neal and Dawson will be huge, and they've both got a wicket already. Middlesex's spinners only went for 57 off 16 overs. Pitch seems pretty variable in terms of bounce for the seamers, and the outfield is a complete lottery so we've probably got to be a little bit sharper in the field. We've not let them get away from us at the start, though, so we've done OK so far.

This pitch is dreadful

Surely as the higher-placed team in the group stage, a washout would see us advance?

And so it came to pass...