Halo Stickman

Why is Yoshida on the bench ffs?

Yep, Abbot opened with Soames in place of Wetherley who turned his ankle fielding. So that’s one batsman already gone, two batsmen injured, and at least 96 overs for the remainder to negotiate tomorrow. Unless, of course, we knock off the required 406 runs first.

Another inauspicious day for Soames and Crane. Can’t really see that Vince and Dawson are benefitting too much by being in England’s World Cup squad; except, I suppose, financially. Hampshire sure ain’t benefitting.

I agree, Vince has played well for Hampshire this season and fully deserved his England call-up. I also thought he started well against Afghanistan, but when he got to twenty something he attempted to hit every ball for four, mostly over mid-on. He should have been caught just before he was actually dismissed. He stopped playing each ball on its merits and seemed to be premeditating his shots before the ball was delivered. Like you say, it’s a judgement failing; but one which seems to me to be brought about by pressure; whether it’s the pressure of feeling he has to push on rather recklessly knowing that Morgan, Stokes, Butler et al are waiting in the wings, or whether it’s the self-inflicted pressure of his previous batting record for England, or something else ... only he really knows, I suppose.

Vince looks mentally broken. Never mind his international career, I’m starting to fear for his cricketing future full stop. It’s a great shame ... things could have been so different for him if he’d ever managed to convert one of his decent starts for England into a three figure total. Now it looks like he’s succumbed to the pressure of his Twenty Something and Out reputation. If he has to play in the next match then it must be somewhere down the batting order .

Hmm. A month ago I was thinking this might be our season I wonder if things might not have turned out quite so disastrously if we had chosen to bowl first on that pitch?

Yesterday felt like a pivotal day in our championship season; taking only three wickets was a big disappointment. We might turn it around today, of course, but I reckon Yorkshire are in the box seat now. I wish I had a pound for every run Ballance has scored against us these past few seasons.

You may be in for a surprise. Anyway, back to today’s match. Cows grazing on the hillside, buzzards mewing overhead, Wight Night real ale in hand, two Hampshire batsmen on a hundred: that’s as near to Hampshire Cricket Nirvana as I’m ever likely to get. Then, today, a win that puts us second by just two points. 1973 and all that; dare to dream?

There’s been plenty of depressing times supporting this club these past few years and tonight is right down there with the lowest of them. Having to wait two weeks for our next fixture doesn’t help; nor does studying our remaining fixtures. Pessimistic and fed up.

Really pleased with that result! Huge boost for morale and confidence, despite dropping into the bottom three. Great to have the spirit and commitment of Yoshida back in defence, with Vestergaard and Bednarek also doing well and Gunn justifying his inclusion. Increasingly optimistic that we can finish above at least three teams this season, even though a few of our possible relegation rivals have started stringing some results together.

I’ve been impressed with Hasenhuttl, and don’t like to be negative, but I’m afraid I’m still struggling to get my head around the fact that we seemingly conceded a Premier League fixture before a ball was even kicked. Yes, some of our players looked knackered against West Ham; yes, Ralph needs to learn the capabilities of his entire squad; yes, Man City are one of the best teams in Europe and we would have been up against it whatever team we put out ... BUT, this was a City team that had lost three of their last four games and were under real pressure to win today; we, on the other hand, were not expected to get any sort of a result, so could treat the match as a ‘free hit’; so I’m bemused as to why we didn’t start our strongest eleven and just go for it. To my mind resting players would be slightly more understandable and acceptable if our next match was against one of our relegation rivals. I suppose, at the end of the day, the fact that we approached the match in what to me was a disappointingly negative fashion speaks volumes to how far we’ve fallen (and teams like Man City have risen) in the past few years.

What an utter f uckup this has been

I’m really struggling to understand the thinking behind this line-up. Can’t really see the point of resting players; imo, we had more chance of getting something out of this match than Chelsea away.

What a difference!

Lemina injured according to Radio Solent

I agree with other posters on here who say that, as our squad stands at present, Stephens and Yoshida should be our first choice CBs, even if this means having to accept the odd mistake now and again. The pair of them actually formed a pretty solid partnership under Puel, following Van Dyke’s injury, and, IMO, we’d have been better off letting this partnership develop rather than disrupt it by the woeful CB signings of the past two seasons. Both players—Yoshida in particular—have shown that they perform better given a settled run of appearances, added to which, both players seem more committed to the club than the other candidates. All this chopping and changing has only served to undermine players’ confidence and ability to form decent partnerships. As for yesterday’s match, I was desperately hoping for some sort of ‘new manager bounce’, but, if anything, the team selection and performance seemed to be more of a step backwards. Let’s hope the steps forwards are just around the corner.

Great news! Good to see the club acting in a decisive and positive fashion. I was supportive of Hughes getting a contract in the summer but this turned out to be a mistake. From what I’ve read about Hasenhüttl I’m very hopeful that he is just the man to get us back on track. The future seems a lot brighter all of a sudden.

One of the advantages of signing someone like Barker is that we’re very unlikely to lose him part way through the season to international call-ups. Hampshire have definitely benefited from Ed Smith’s decision to dump Vince this year (and probably benefitted from his decision to draft in Buttler, persevere with Jennings and recall Ali). For this reason, if we manage to sign an opener who is capable of batting for more than half a session then it’s probably best that he’s not English.

The main reasons for our sharp decline these past few seasons is, first, selling our best players, second, buying poor replacements, third, breaking our academy conveyor-belt. I won’t hold Hughes responsible for any of these, but why he keeps picking Hoedt ahead of Yoshida is ****ing beyond me.

Our formation and the players Southgate selected to play this formation was pretty effective whilst we were on the front foot going forward and playing with high tempo; but in most matches we seemed to run out of steam, allowing the opposition to gain the ascendancy and put us on the back foot ... and it was at this point we started to look vulnerable, especially the ball-winning and ball-retention of our midfield. It’s difficult to say what we could have done to best address this problem: replacing Alli or Lingard with, say, Dyer or Delph would perhaps have been a solution, but often the problem had arisen before half-time, and to make those sort of substitutions at that stage would have looked negative, undermined our cutting edge going forward, and lessened our chances of getting back on the front foot. On a more general point, I’m with others who say that this team has restored their interest and passion for the England side; indeed, I had become so disillusioned with the Billy Big B ollocks attitude of former England sides that I’d even given up watching them on the telly. Now, I’m still feeling pretty gutted over twenty-four hours after our exit. Sadly, despite my restored faith and optimism for the England team, I suspect it will be a long, long time before we have a better opportunity to reach a World Cup Final.

Yep, that’s about the size of it, I reckon.

Clinically professional performance from the Hampshire team, and a memorable day out in the sunshine for us supporters! Brilliant.

Yep, it’s all pretty depressing. I wasn’t one of those that had us down as championship contenders but I was more than hopeful that we wouldn’t be struggling against relegation yet again. Injuries certainly haven’t helped but I think that our problems go deeper than that: for years now we seem to have struggled to sustain any sort of pressure on the opposition, and all too easily fold when under pressure ourselves. I don’t really know where the main problem lies: the coaches, the captain, an over-reliance on kolpaks and short-term overseas players, under development of our academy players, the mindset of the players themselves?

6 runs needed with 13 balls remaining; one batsman on 103, the other on 56; and we manage to lose. Can't think of a more disappointing Hampshire finish ever, tbh; although, as Weston says, credit to the Kent bowlers. The phrase 'p issing on their parade' couldn't be more apt for poor young Weatherly and Taylor. Hopefully this won't have an adverse effect on their development; both have done well recently.

Good news. Hughes, Bowen and Niedzwiecki moulded a decent team from a bunch of dispirited and bewildered players, and brought a bit of pride, passion and purpose back into our performances. Avoiding relegation has saved this club a fortune, prevented redundancies and loss of match day revenue at local businesses. For this alone they deserve a chance at managing us next season; but I believe they're a good fit for us regardless.