Ian Shepherd: Hello there, this is Always Look on the Bright Side of life, the Somerset Cricket Podcast. My name's Ian Sheppard. Joining me this evening, safely returned from sunny Orlando, is our Exiled Northern correspondent, Steve Tankock. Steve, how are going? Did you have a good holiday? Yeah, good holiday. Thank you. Made all the better by sitting on the beach, getting the live text through of Abe's hitting the winning runs. Can't think of a better way to spend your holiday. Many wives don't agree that that is the best way to spend your holiday. or I think the quote is always on your bloody phone watching the cricket but you know if it relaxes me. Has to be done. To be fair it does actually relax you watching the tense run chase like happened at the Utilita Bowl last week and ⁓ also joining us today is the only one of us who's actually watched Somerset since we last recorded. It the only one who managed to make it to ⁓ Taunton on Saturday to watch a pretty good game of cricket. Dan, ⁓ always nice to have you my beat, sorry. is indeed, yeah. extremely nice when it was so comprehensive as well. From Yeah, was Yeah, just a brilliant win against a team which obviously in the men's game, we've got, you know, a pretty ⁓ hot rivalry with. Hopefully in the women's game, it will go the same way. But yeah, we just need a Tom Curran character to emerge from the from the sorry, women's team, don't we? It was there. Yeah, I don't think there's anybody just looking through the line at all. pretty decent characters. I was, I watched as much as I could sat there. I was sort of in about doing things. I mean, Heather Knight's class was just abundant and she really does feel like a new sign in after missing most of last season with an injury. Just totally anchored that first inning total, didn't she? Yeah, yeah, exactly. The partnership with Lough was absolutely key. We'd lost a couple of Lady Wickets. There was that short boundary on one side which tempted the bow for the opening, at least one of the openings I think got up trying to hit sort of here in that direction, but it did need a bit of circumspection I think, you know, there was a bit of movement early on is what Heavenite said. yeah, so Knight and consolidated for a while and then just, you know, gradually sped up. They obviously are probably our two best batters. And then once, once Lough got out, was just Danny Gibson who came in instead and Knight at that point was just very cleverly just giving the strike to Gibber who was ⁓ you know, hitting boundaries of plenty at the other end. that Gibbo, the other Gibbo. That's a scary thought. I know if I would answer you related. I don't think they are. I think we did ask the question once. don't think they are. if he keeps on batting like that, he'll find a relationship soon enough. Definitely will, Yeah, just absolute class. tell you what, one thing that really impressed me as well, and kind of showed where they going on from last year was Luffy. got, I don't want to say she got stuck, but she was maybe about 15 off 30, 35 balls towards the start of earning. She's a bit of a slow starter, I think maybe in previous years she would have maybe felt that pressure a little bit more. Obviously having Heather Knight at the other end, one of the all time greats is going to help. I thought the way that he just suddenly went, just went through the gears and you know, what she ended up with pretty much 60 at a run of ball. I'm trying to see what on an accelerated. ⁓ I think as well, looking at two wins against Surrey this season and last season and benchmarking them and looking at how we performed that first win at Beckenham, that legendary win, let's be honest, it took a pretty special performance to get us over the line from our overseas player. Whereas this season it's much more of an all-round team effort and we've absolutely thumped them. So if you look at that, like where the side have gone in 12 months, I know Surrey don't play at a consistent level all the time, nobody does, but looking at that you think, ⁓ something's happening here. Yeah and the fact that it followed on from beating the defending champions Lancashire away from home as well, it does imply that something is a bit different this year. It'd interesting to see how we go about our England players, you know, because obviously the England players have contributed quite a lot so far. So it'd be interesting to see who can step up and hopefully keep the winds coming once the England players are away. Yeah, because they don't start... Well, the first ODI against New Zealand is Sunday the 10th of May, so there is quite a while before that starts. Yes. But I do have some news from that regard. Have you seen the squad for tomorrow? ⁓ I briefly looked at it. I know that the England girls aren't there. They are not there. And that is very strange because every single other England century contracted or skills contracted player is available for their county tomorrow. There are a few exceptions in terms of illnesses, injuries and lengths aren't playing, but every other England player who is available is playing for their county tomorrow. But R3 are not. And I'm completely baffled. I can't work out the reason why. Initially I thought, when I saw it earlier, I thought, ⁓ maybe there's another bloody training camp. But no, all the other Ingram players are available. So it's really, really strange. And a real shame for us. Well, I mean, we're about four or five weeks into the season and we don't mention conspiracy theories yet because everything's going so well. But I we found our first one that they decided to arrest our three best players, our three England internationals. ⁓ Very, very strange. We await the explanation. mean, it will make for a more interesting match because Essex don't actually have any England players. And this match last season was basically the same time of year, also at Taunton Vale. And we had our England players and we thrash them basically. So it will be more an interesting match without the England players. And I mean, could it be because the ECB would see it as too much of a mismatch if we had our England players? Like, that's the only theory I can think of. I mean, it shouldn't be that. know. No, there's no way they can that. It shouldn't be. But I can't think of anything else. They can't just go around arbitrarily handicapping teams because they fancy it. But imagine, imagine. it might just be good. Well, thing is, Hampshire have got four England players available tomorrow. All of their four England players are available for them tomorrow. If we were playing Hampshire tomorrow, it would be, it would be outrageous if they were allowed their four England players and we weren't allowed any of ours. So it just makes me think that has they have somehow taken your position into account? I mean, it's really, really, really strange. I, yeah, some of them said why they've just said unavailable. So. Yeah, we need to get to the bottom. I've never heard of anything like that in any form of professional sport. The governing body getting involved to handicap a side to make it a fairer game against the opposition. It might not be, well, it might not be that they are only doing it to handicap some, I say. might be that it could be that, in the previous round, some players have been rested for the odd games. Lucifer Brunton only just played her first game in the last round of games. She hadn't played before that. this one or two others who have been rested for the odd game. It might be that Knight, Dean and Gibson were always going to be rested for one game perhaps in this initial block of matches and they thought, ⁓ let's make, you know, it could be this Essex game to make the game more competitive. You know, that, that I'm not saying this is the reason at all, but. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe it seems it would make sense to rest them all at once and then, know, you can pick your strongest side for the rest of the tournament. Yeah. jiggling things around every week. Yeah, it could be that. could be our request almost. Yeah, it's really, really odd. But anyway, it would be very nice if the girls do it tomorrow because that would mean that Somerset, the team that makes notoriously bad starts to the season, would be undefeated in the first month. And that, there's a stat for you. Dan, when was the last time Somerset went undefeated in April? Probably when we started on the 28th of April. Yeah, I was going to say. What about 2024? Wasn't that a load of draws or was there a loss in there as well? ⁓ possibly, I don't know. But the point I'm making is we are being spoiled ⁓ as Somerset fans at the moment. Everything is going extremely well. ⁓ So long may it continue. Thanks for listening. Catch up with you next week. Steve, I know you were... ⁓ Away last week, but I feel like I need to give you the floor because you are you are one of Tom Abel's biggest fans And I know you've probably been dying to just chip in About his very special effort down at Utilisable last week. So the floor is yours I think it was the most untomable thing to actually go to his hundred with the winning shot because I was as I say watching it from afar in terms of the text commentary and For the last hour I was thinking Abe's is going to be not at 97 here. That's what's going to happen. And whoever's at the other end is going to hit the winning runs. And he would walk off perfectly happy with that. It wouldn't bother him at all because the win is more important than his personal milestones. I just, I don't think, although it's nerve wracking for all of us, I actually don't think there is a better way to win a championship game than a decent run chase. A run chase against Essex was nice for completely different reasons because it was all over before you'd blinked. But the winner proper run chase and to like this week, I've been sort of keeping a close eye on all the other games and on who's doing this, how and not to get on our watch, getting on what's happening here and there. Other teams will looked and thought, okay, so they've rolled Essex at Chelmsford. Now they've been set a big target and they've chased that down. It's a multifaceted team. of course, Lewis Gregory coming back into the side and having that crucial spell, ⁓ which was a game changer, wasn't it? And the Hampshire second innings was just equally important. But you knew on the final morning that it wasn't going to be Rue and Abel to cruise home. You knew it was going to happen like that. And then Craig Overton comes in, and he's a banker to stay there with Aves. He's gone. And, but it, no, just worked out perfectly. And it's weird because when we were talking pre-season, when we did our early pre-season podcast and I was like, this, think this is going to be a really tough season. Worried about the bowl and I'm not getting carried away. Worried about the bowling, you know, no overseas, you know, no knock on McGee, but no overseas international star to bolster the side. ⁓ And you sort of think, and I've gone in the space of three matches from, well, let's just enjoy the season to, ⁓ my God, what are my plans for the last couple of weeks of the season already? And I know in a couple of weeks time, you'll be shouting at me and saying, why did you even say that? But I'm saying it in the context of how I think we've overachieved, but how we've exceeded expectations already. And the next, let's look ahead to the next three games quickly. All three of those are eminently winnable games. Yep. know, haven't got, know, Gibbo would be on and he hasn't got the opportunity to say, ⁓ but now we've got the real test. He was the one saying the champions at home, Essex and Hampshire away. That's a horrible start. What more can you do? of the league. Yeah. I mean, obviously, Yorkshire have got some quality players, most notably, certain Joe Root will be making his way down to Torton on Friday, which is nice to see him back, but not too many. They are good side, they've had a bit of a tough start to the season, I mean, the last round of fixtures where we had the weak off couldn't have gone any better, really. Because I think as well as coming from Hampshire, that would have been quite an emotionally draining day watching that run chase. So just to be able to completely unwind after that and not have to think about getting yourself ready and fit for another game on Fridays is massive as well. So think there'll be fresh Yorkshire, know, all those games went to pretty boring draws. None of them went to the fourth innings, which is I think is Just a disgusting, disgraceful advert for the county championship, really. I was sat here yesterday afternoon, sort of looking through the scorecard, thinking, is there anything exciting I can watch in Division 1? Is there anything that's going to even maybe have a 10 % chance of sparkling into life? And nothing did. The closest, think, Yorkshire took a couple of quick wickets against Sussex, and that one petered out into a draw. Well, Ben Folk's volunteer Jordan Clark at the Oval come the end, mean... Come on, mate, Jamie Swift just can't get the gloves down at the Oval. But just a fact you could have asked for a better set of results and we're not top anymore, but we're one point off in second with a game and I was pretty good. I'm happy. Yeah, it was interesting. suppose the only... Go on, Dan, sorry. Just gonna say that in Division 2, all three matches were positive results. But yeah, Division 1 was just ball draws. Caused by flat pitches largely. I Galwigan played in the hybrid pitch and they're often unreliable, aren't they? You never quite know what they're gonna do. They said that they didn't want it to be so flat, but that's how it turned out. Surrey was flat once again. The over-wiz reverting to sort of real flat ones again this season, and for some of last season as well, wasn't it? Yeah, I mean, Chris Payne has been in touch on Twitter. He makes a good point that, with it being eight points for a draw, it is. There's not really that incentive. mean, in a different world, Essex probably could have gone and tried to set something up on. Yeah, they could have been something happened at certainly the game at the oval was probably the one that I. paid most attention to, but I think they need to get rid of eight points for a draw. think they need to look at the batting bonus points as well. Does it need to be 450? Does it need to be 110 overs? I think it just all needs looking at. Do you just revert it? Get rid of all of that and just say, right, go for 10 points for a win and four points for a draw or three points for a draw, whatever, and that's it. Well, five points for a draw was the norm for 2013 and 2019 was five points for a draw. Then it became eight for a few years. Then it became five again in 2023. That was sort of a basable, you know, basable reasons. That was the same time that it went to 450 for the last batting point. But then in 2024, the batting point stayed as 450, but draws went back to 8. And I don't know if it was really explained properly at the time, but county fans always seem to largely agree that 8 points is far too many for a draw. And funny enough, I have done a bit of research into this. So I've looked at last season. He's got that glint in his eye listeners. You can still do your nicked in or whatever you want now. This is down for the next 20 minutes. Off his long run. I've been meaning to do this for a long time so I was very excited to get round to it. yeah, it's just funny enough I happened to do this the other week. last season in the county championship, I looked at the average points each team got for a win and for a draw. So in the average win, a team got 21.1 points. So that's including bonus points. So the average win was 21 and a bit points. 16 for the win and then five and a half bonus points. Yeah, exactly. And then the average points in a draw was 12.6. So that's eight and four and a half bonus points. So basically in a draw, you got more than the average points for a draw is more than half the average points for a win. That just shows that the point system is wrong to me. A draw should be half a win or less in basically any sport. win because when that's the problem when you add on the bonus points it it may it skews these things because obviously yes a draw is worth half a win because it's eight points for a draw and 16 points for win once you add on the bonus points that's not ever really how it works out especially because in a draw it's more likely to be high score and it's more likely to be batting points a win may well be more bowler friendly you might only get three bowling points so you could get a draw where you get like 16 points but you can also get a win where you get 19 points like that is a three point difference And that backs up the point that Chris Payne was making on Twitter, it's too narrow of a gap between a draw and a win so that teams are incentivized to produce flat pitches and draw their way to safety to the title, whatever. mean, you can't fully draw your way to that. You've got to get some wins. But that, to me, is the biggest indication that the number of points for a draw is wrong. The fact that in an average draw, you're more than the average, sorry, more than half of the average win. with Jimmy Hill in football, wasn't it? We came up with the idea of three points for a win, one point for a draw. I'd say that was back in the old days, two points for a win, one point for a draw. It kind of echoes what you're saying, Dan, is, you know, would, it's not really worth that much more trying to go for the win. It makes more sense. And you know, know, your line of work, Steve, can't see that when you, if you look at the, you sort of balance the numbers and the statistics and the probabilities and you look at your predicted ROIs and all this sort of nonsense. And then you look at it, go, well, it probably makes more sense to go for a low risk strategy, low risk, low reward rather than a high risk, low reward. But it, as Dan said, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy then, doesn't it? Because, you know, all the numbers will have been crunched and probably looked at the same numbers over the last few seasons. and county coaches and we'll be talking to their grounds and directs the cricket talk to their grounds. And I'm saying, you know, we, there is no upside here of us taking the risk for three. If the risk was eight, nine points for the win, worth doing it because you can catapult yourself up a table in that situation. But you take all the risk and win. And then you find out you've only gained. What was the average spread down about four points, five points. And you know, average win was 21 the average draw was 12.6 yeah so it's a nine point gain but if you're if you're producing flat wazzie you're probably going to get more than 12 obviously for yes yeah so you could you could potentially have a 14 15 point draw let's say you know 580 for seven plays or 92 for eight or something in the first innings yeah absolutely and You know, you then get the situation where if you are playing for a win, teams are playing for a win, the pitches are going to be prepared slightly differently. And then maybe you even bring the spinners back in early in the season to the equation. So there's got to be a rethink. There really has. But I think the thing is, know, we're, Dan's doing this. We're all looking at it in a more random, less analytical way and thinking it. But probably the people at ECB Towers haven't got the first clue of these sorts of trends. They're just like, ⁓ look at that. Our live streams are still going to five o'clock on a Monday afternoon on all our championship games. Isn't that fantastic? You know, that might well be what the situation is. you know, from our point of view, then it's a case of my only concern would be that it is difficult to win games at Taunton at the moment. So in a way, Dan, it's a bit of a comfort that the gap isn't as big because we might end up drawing more than we win at Taunton this season. think Nick Pepper and Steve are desperately trying to get some cracking chances. Absolutely. And I don't think for a second that the pitch that we better get to not was in any way designed for a draw. I fully believe that we back ourselves to beat anybody that comes to Taunton on a on a good cricket wicket, you know, because we have done, you know, not many sides, you know, tend to come to talk and roll us over. We, you know, we do. I'm sure Nick's enjoyed the recent weather as well, which will give him a better chance to do what he wants to the wicket. Yeah, absolutely. And of course the weather as well, you know, although they're not sort of massive green seamers, I gather that the cold kind of doesn't help pitch preparation terms, getting paced and bouncing to them. But that's way over, way over my head. Yeah, so I mean, you know, we've been over the schedule, I've been doing times, what can we do? You're not going to play the T20 in April. You play the Metro Bank in April. That means you've got to play some championship cricket with like 100 players in August. Is that what you want? So I mean, it kind of looks like we're stuck in it. Can we do like a reverse cooker butter experiment? Is there a ball that does more than the jink that we can find? I know we use them in the Devon League, they're not great but mind you we're probably not using the top of the range ones. They use them in Division 2, early 2010s think, specifically Division 2, not in Division 1. I think they did more. I think they did more for bowlers than the Jukes. Maybe try that. Maybe legalise ball tampering in April. Yeah. know, everybody signs Cameron, Cameron, Bancroft, Gloucester would be top if they did that instead of Languishing at the bottom of division two. Although they did win, pick up the Gloucesters, beating Derbyshire at the weekend. I mean, I mentioned before that none of those division one games went into the fourth innings. Is it better? Which game is better? A game that doesn't go into the fourth innings or a game that doesn't go into the fourth day? better. But yeah, they just didn't go in the fourth day. I know it's a generalisation, but you know, a game where you get a result rather than Ben Folk's bowling medium pace, which is quite handy as well, I thought, didn't you see? He got a couple of the left thing go away. I mean, if they got him on earlier in the day, maybe it might not have been a board draw. Who knows? Who knows? The problem with pitches as well is that now you lose all the points you get in the match for a below average pitch. You get the deduction and you lose all the points you got in the match which just encourages even more conservative pitch preparation. It's just the complete wrong direction to what everyone wants, particularly Somerset fans given those troubles we have with pitches over the years. The ECBs are going in the opposite direction. They're not encouraging spin, you know, even though it's well known that English players struggle to play spin. We don't, and it's well known that we don't produce that many spinners and yet the ECB discourage it further. And yet next time we come to Asia, we'll have the same old problems. And everyone will say, well, why don't we encourage more spinning kind of cricket? Like they just don't seem to learn. It's well before the time you two would, would have been going to cricket, but I'll say it again. probably said it on the pod before back in the days of three day championship cricket, when it was a hundred over maximum first innings. And that went on for a long time. And I'm pretty certain was with the regs when we had the glory, Richard's gone, both years. That was, you know, cricket mad 15 year old. didn't care. I'd go to the country, go and run down after school, do whatever just to watch the cricket. But when you look back at it with the distance, it used to be 306 for five declared played 301 for eight or sorry innings closed, played 301 for eight innings closed. And that would finish up with probably about an hour, hour and a quarter left on the second day. And so then you would have the situation of do the captains get together and go, right, we'll have a BIF and try and get 250 by lunch tomorrow and then we'll declare. And the games were just looking back on it now. I'm like, why did I enjoy watching it so much? Cause it wasn't great. And so when they changed the four day cricket, I thought this is great because you're going to have mini test matches and the better teams would come out on top and I honestly think if we'd had four-day cricket in the late 70s we would have won the championship because the bowling attack was so strong then. We could have bowled anyone out twice and you know given proper circumstances and chasing 250, 260 on the last day was not a problem for Rose Denning, Richards, both are met out. And so listening to Dan and as always so wisely explaining what's going on, that is so sad because it seems to me that every objective that was right for setting full day cricket is being undermined by the regulations and the mindset. And yeah, we've had some really good games, haven't we? That's how you want, know, being partial for a minute, the neutral who didn't have any other cricket would have enjoyed those games. All three of our games have been good games that have kept the neutral involved to the end. Haven't been an awful lot of games outside of those that have been that way. Here's a thought experiment then. What would happen if we did away with pitch penalties altogether? knots would win the championship like they did in the Hadley and Rice era but do know what i mean it can't be dangerous it's got you know it's got to be prepared you're not allowed to leave three inches of grass on it you're not allowed to it's got to be evenly cut but With the current points system, you'd get flat ones still for sure, but you would also get ambitious counties, perhaps taking a few more risks to try and get a few more wins. And it would produce better cricket, it might produce more two-day finishes, but it would produce better cricket. It would probably produce more of a variety of conditions and it would probably prepare England players a bit better for playing abroad. Would you ever go to the, I mean, I know that the extreme one I always kind of look back at is, is Essex 2019. Mainly because we knew the weather forecast was going to give us two days of play to win the championship. So we needed to get a pitch that would give us a result in two days. So that I think is, is the extreme of what you could probably get away with. And I say get away with under my system of no penalties, but you kind of know what I mean. It's like, you... It was a massive roll of the dice. was shit or bust. The draw's no good. We've got to win and we've got to win in two days. Now, you're only ever going to get that at maybe the last game, maybe two games of the season. So for the rest of the season, sides can... On the side of a sporting cricket wicket, if you like. I don't want say a bad pitch. mean, okay. Because you aren't going to... prepare something and then you get rolled over in two days and you make it look stupid. But removing that sort of gun to your head of saying, you can't do this, you can't do this, we've got to prepare a good pitch, we've got to prepare the pitch, it's got to be flat R. You we've got this four point suspended penalty hanging over our heads. ⁓ this is really bad. I mean, that Durham pitch, along with it, first couple of days, they just played stupid shots and got out. They looked at it, got in their heads and they all played like tacks. I don't, I just think it- Apart from the last two weeks of the season you are just going to the ground staff trying to, you know, that threat removed that you might see some more sporting wickets that give you some more exciting cricket. I nearly said better cricket. was self-regulated to some extent anyway because if a county was producing bowler friendly pitches all the time then all their batters will want to leave and go and go somewhere else. If batters aren't scoring any runs and aren't getting the chance to pile on the runs in order to play for England, they're going to want to leave, aren't they? And also, chief executives aren't going be very happy if every match finishes in a day and a half or two days because all the money will be lost and members wouldn't be very happy if they're not out of cricket. wouldn't be seeing any more if they're only seeing two day finishes. So, yeah, no county is going to be in the right mind is going to always going to be desperately trying to produce two day, two day wickets. So. Yeah, it's not the worst idea I've heard for sure. That means a lot coming from you Dan, not the worst idea. Not like my subs idea. But yeah, I just give it a go. Why not? When they bought that bloody Cooke and Burrow ball in. So this is definitely not a worse idea than that. While we're on this as questions then what else have we got? ⁓ Saints1885, I don't know if he's a Southampton fan without a Twitter name. Yeah. Just echo what we say in Hampshire's grounds, we've had a good pitch. ⁓ Andrew Frampton says, why are only Surrey allowed to produce poor pitches? We five and a half thousand spectators on day one, but if they continue to produce these pitches, surely these one-sided batting games will put people off? Well, absolutely. ⁓ Can't disagree with that. ⁓ I feel like we had more questions. ⁓ Freddie Marsden. That's what we think JT language's future is this season. He's currently playing ⁓ in seconds against Saka upper Mosley. think that one is. Yeah, I like him. think there's. If we're still at the top of the table, though, it's going to be a big call to to give him an opportunity ahead of another senior bowler who's fit. That's the only thing. So it may be another one where you possibly go on loan. to get some overs under his belt in the county championship. But I like the look of him. He's got all the attributes. Very impressive in the Metro Bank One Day Cup this year. ⁓ Yeah, it's a big call to put him in the Championship side. We don't have masses of depth, so a couple of injuries and you might have to play. mean, James Thiedem has got a bit of an injury at the moment, think. He's not playing the current second half in game, so if there's two or three injuries suddenly, JT Langley would have to play in the County Championship. Well, kind of injuries with the batters, you know, that can quite easily happen with the... mean, Craig Obert had been sort of at first slip instead of... TKC and took that catch, it could have been very different story. Thank God he wasn't. He bowling or was it Jake Ball that was bowling that one? I can't remember. Good stuff. We have another reason why we are... I have a reason why you talked about tentative fate Steve, I've got one as well. Do know what? We're definitely going to win a championship this year. down smoking down right now. You never guess what is nesting in the corner behind the the roll off under Merva Pavilion. really? Little family of blackbirds. It's all coming together. It is all coming together. I've just Bob Deplage said don't mention the double. I didn't mention the double. I've had a bet on us to do the double though so. Hannah comes again, you got blackbirds behind the nest in your cabin? what? My eyesight was terrible, so couldn't quite, I don't want to go between the gap to have a look and disturb her, so I've kind of got my ⁓ decent camera out and there she was. Mummy blackbird sat on the nest, baby blackbirds behind the roll-off and the merber pavilion, it's all coming together. Speaking of coming together, then shall we try and put a side together for the weekend, the bank holiday weekend, of course? ⁓ Some set welcoming Yorkshire to Taunton. Tom Coddick-Hammel's not fit, Louis Goldsworthy's not fit, so I presume the batting is as is. Archie Bourne, Josh Thomas, Tom and Iman B, James Rue, Tom Abel, Will Smee, Craig Overton, Lewis Gregory, Miguel Pretorius, Alfie Ogborn or Jake Ball and Jack Neish. ⁓ It's very difficult to go outside of that because we haven't really got anybody else fit. Yeah obviously Gregory Craig nailed on you think. will play, he didn't play the last game. Leach, yeah so yeah it's between all point and ball isn't it. Interesting obviously they might be... would fancy Ogbourne to play wouldn't you because if they're playing him on this, I know we had a week off but he played alternate weeks for the first three games. I think I have no kind of criteria for resting this week. My only question to you both is given that the cricket press have now jumped on a certain Durham opener as the next thing to play for England and Jason Kerr said that moving James Roo up the order was in his thoughts. Is now the time to move James Roo up to open and obviously one of Archie or Josh has to drop down to four or five. No, I don't think so. Gibbo would say yes. Yeah, not with the, not with the glove. think if you've got to do it, it's got to be a long-term thing and without the gloves as well. But that's not going to happen until the the next phase of the championship then? No, and I'm quite happy. I've got, you know, Jason Carey who has signed a new contract today, so he's here for another couple of years. I think if you look at his record, he's pretty well deserved. I'm looking at it going, well, this is what I've done to get us to the top of the table almost second, but you know what mean? James Roo is churning out runs to fun at four. I don't really want to change that. I've really got a compelling reason to change that. think if England want to pick James Roo, they'll pick him. I don't think him opening for three games in the championship is going to make that much of a difference to how he would go open in the batting in the first test against New Zealand. I really don't. I don't. I just don't see what. If you want to give a lad experience opening the batting, you've got to give it a hoot for like a year. know what I mean? It's not like, yeah, open the batting this week and then you're ready to open the batting for England. He's got all the attributes there. There's plenty of times he's been in quite early. A lot of times he's had to face a second new ball. I think for what it would detriment Somerset to how it would benefit James Roo. I don't kind of see, I don't think he would see a massive benefit from it in terms of his own experience and also the chances of him opening the back, being selected to open the back of the ring. He's been on the radar for long enough. He churns out runs. He's got brilliant head on his shoulders. He is the typical run machine. just wind him up, send him out and he gets on with it. Yeah, I think, I think it's a good chance in the dark going to pick him. I mean, regardless of whether it opens, I think they like the look of him. They like his attributes. They like the fact that he's turning out the runs and it was send a decent, know, they've been talking about changing the messaging a bit, trying to pick players based on county runs. he is the clear standout in the country really from over the, over the last few years. And he's informed right now. And obviously you I think you alluded to Emilio Gay Steve. He's he he's only bang three for Durham as well. So he's nice to opening. Obviously three is a bit closer to opening than four. But Rudy's off he scored 100. Was it 100? Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, it was 103 against Knots in the end the first game of the season. So yeah, he's got he's got all the attributes and I hope you as Shep said, you worry about disrupting group slightly what if what if we did put him up to open and then he struggled for a few games that might kill us chances of being the England team, you know. Yeah, I think at this point, if we were gonna do it, I think we'd have done it at the start of season, but as we said, he's keeping wicket, and it is bloody difficult to keep wicket and open the batting on a consistent basis. And I think ECB should understand that. I hope ECB do understand that we aren't being difficult for the sake of it. We just genuinely don't think it's a good idea for wicket keepers to open the batting, which is completely fair thing, because very few keepers... do open the bank consistently in first-class cricket you get it on the odd occasion to see Davis did it a little bit for us but never never for a long period of time so yeah but yeah be interesting when Thomas Rue is available whether he jumps straight into the team and that does enable James to go to open but by then James might be with the England team anyway so you know ⁓ Yeah, I was kind of eagerly looking at the potential clashes on my Cricket or Walsh art. I mean, he would obviously complete this round of championship games and then probably missed the two in the middle of the blast. The four at the start of the next one and then be available for the last two if he was with the England team. I mean, such split lorgies on this one. I'd love him to not be picked for England and be our gun and score 1500 runs in the middle order. But then again, he is from pretty much the second he strolled out in that game against Langston and made his debut just to look the part and look destined for bigger things. He's international class and he deserves a place for England. It's a job, we've got to spare. They say in football, don't they, that a lot of very sensible managers, if a player wants to leave, the way you let a player go affects the ability to sign players coming in. That was very much a clop mantra that when the fans were unhappy because a player had left, he would say that. And I think the same sort of applies here that, you know, yes, if we are in a position in August or July, sorry, where we want him to play in those champo games but he's playing for England. The split loyalties are unbearable if we're chasing the title but if it creates the pathway for other talented young players who might be looking where to move to, wow look at what Somerset have done they're giving the young players a chance not just James going to England but Thomas, Alfie, Josh JT language potentially all coming through the pathway. There's, there's dividends to be reaped there in my opinion from, from that. So, you know, it's, we are fortunate that we do have, you know, could potentially have Thomas coming in and taking James's place. And we might be going through this time. Who's missing James Rue? Thomas is doing perfectly fine. You don't know, do you? So, know, back in the seventies, we'll have Banton back fit. We'll have TKC back. I spent a fun afternoon on Twitter today helping Tom Banton fix his topmail, which is quite unexpected He put a thing on Twitter said on my hotmail working those sort of gives all my do for living So I was gonna message about so we tried this this and this next next thing I know he slid into my DMS and we're having a little back and forth about have you tried this kind of reset the password this that and the other Yeah, that was quite an unexpected way to spend an hour and a half or so. this wasn't a team's call and he could have seen the shirt behind you for the team's call. I'm sure I'm sure Barry's a regular viewer and he's seen the shirt. So ⁓ yeah, but then we I think he eventually worked out there's probably something wrong at Microsoft said and then it's going to sort itself out in the next day or so. So but yeah, your hotmail sorted Tom and also your finger as well, which is much more important. ⁓ Just going to quickly double check twitter again, I don't think we've done anything We've missed anything. ⁓ dan question from your dad He wants to know why the england players aren't wearing playing for somerset tomorrow ⁓ this is a good one. ⁓ I didn't see this one This is from the real ch3. Here's an oddball. I don't know if he's repair referring to himself or all the question as a somerset supporter On the other side of the pond in Dallas, Texas, that obviously can't attend games in person, what's the best way to help support the club? Well, know. Well, obviously, listening to this podcast is a great start there. I'm just going to call you CH. ⁓ It's associate membership, isn't there? ⁓ Associate membership, gets you five tickets or something like that. mean, you could still become a member and you are allowed to vote at the AGM, I believe, even if you are over there in the States. you go and you start becoming a member. ⁓ you ask nicely, the president would probably visit he's He may do yeah. have you seen what president jr's up to at the moment? No On the tv have you not have you seen what old ⁓ Nine o'clock tonight channel four one was jr Okay Say no more. I could never have on and done that. So fair play fair play to birdie for ⁓ taking the plunge and He's gone on Virgin Island. I saw that and I saw him on the advert and I texted Peter and said, exactly on lad on the telly. I'm very proud of him, he's done it very brave. Never heard of him before. He's on that, he's Bertie, so do give that a watch tonight after you've finished listening. Another thing I guess for CHs, I'm sure it won't be cheap but Ben would always be keen to dispatch you some merch if, you know, not that a hoodie or a fleece would be needed in Dallas most of the year, but I'm sure a one day shirt and a pair of shorts would go down nicely. From the shop, mean, just pop a comment in on the live stream. Yeah. There's all sorts of ways of doing it. But I the most important thing is that you are at some point and we are a broad family. As we can see there we are worldwide as well, which is fantastic. mean, it's not that the word because it helps Ben's social media engagement stats. If have messaged in last week, you could have met up for a pint, couldn't you? yeah, Orlando and Dallas are right next door to each other. I'm not saying it's not that far, is it? You could have popped over in the evening for a drink at Disney Springs. course it is. ⁓ Brandon, I don't know what... substances Brandon's on but he said can we have a season-long mission to find out Jake Ball's favorite cheese? Well who knows something from the Midlands probably being a man still boy. On that note then do we have AOB to discuss? I just wish the boys good luck and fair weather for the weekend. Absolutely and the girls as well we want to be undefeated in April please Sophie Laugh if you could sort that out for us that'll be absolutely fantastic and I can sing Blackbird so loud let me Blackbirds get this done. luck Blackbirds. Spring watch with Ian Shepherd. Absolutely. unfortunately circumstances mean I can only get to the ground on Monday if the game's still going on that long. I presume it will be given what we've been talking about, pitches. So yeah, if you're about I'll see you then. Otherwise we'll catch up with you next week. Cheers guys.