[Countyman]

13-man squad:

Adam Rossington (c)(wk)
Gareth Berg
Nathan Buck
Ben Curran
Emilio Gay
Rob Keogh
Simon Kerrigan
Ben Sanderson
Tom Taylor
Charlie Thurston
Ricardo Vasconcelos
Alex Wakely
Jack White

All the regulars appear except Richard Levi, Luke Procter and Saif Zaib.

[Countyman]

The signs are already ominous! In recent seasons, the opposition's revival tended to start with the lower middle/late order, but this time the recovery was from 38-3. Oh, for a spinner with control who can keep things tight at one end! Parnell is required ASAP.

[Shortlegs]

Procter is injured I believe, but I don't know about the others. We'll be relying very much on our youngsters coming good this year as we've made no new signings in the batting department.

I'm a bit concerned Rips still thinks our batting is good enough in 4-day cricket despite evidence to the contrary over the past few seasons. Will Wakely and Keogh at last come good? Let's hope so, though in an ideal world we'd have signed more consistent performers by now.

[saintcobbler]

Vas is going well.

[Den Buckett]

Some things never change. Yesterday their last 2 wickets put on loads. Today Wakely given yet another chance is out for 4. Dropped at the end of last season I don’t understand how he is back in again. He is nowhere near first class level and having always struggled against Div 2 opponents I can’t see how he can prosper now we are playing some of the ‘Div 1’ counties.

[Shortlegs]

Some things never change. Yesterday their last 2 wickets put on loads. Today Wakely given yet another chance is out for 4. Dropped at the end of last season I don’t understand how he is back in again. He is nowhere near first class level and having always struggled against Div 2 opponents I can’t see how he can prosper now we are playing some of the ‘Div 1’ counties.

Completely agree. I've always thought that one of Rips failings is that he refuses to accept that some of his "favourites" are not good enough and keeps playing them regardless. Wakely is perhaps the most obvious case, but Keogh, and to an extent Levi, are others. Keeping these underperformers is probably why we haven't signed a consistent red bal number 4 or 5, who, with Vasconcelos, good be the spine of our batting and allow the likes of Curran, Gay and Thurston time to develop.

[Den Buckett]

Some things never change. Yesterday their last 2 wickets put on loads. Today Wakely given yet another chance is out for 4. Dropped at the end of last season I don’t understand how he is back in again. He is nowhere near first class level and having always struggled against Div 2 opponents I can’t see how he can prosper now we are playing some of the ‘Div 1’ counties.

Completely agree. I've always thought that one of Rips failings is that he refuses to accept that some of his "favourites" are not good enough and keeps playing them regardless. Wakely is perhaps the most obvious case, but Keogh, and to an extent Levi, are others. Keeping these underperformers is probably why we haven't signed a consistent red bal number 4 or 5, who, with Vasconcelos, good be the spine of our batting and allow the likes of Curran, Gay and Thurston time to develop.

I always cut Keogh a bit of slack because he is a good fielder, can bowl if just to give the pacemen a rest and shows more talent with his batting than Wakely - admittedly it looks like he will never be a consistent scorer at first class level. Levi is really only here for one day cricket, can be useful on his day but that isn’t very often.

[Shortlegs]

Excellent innings from Vasconcelos and fair play to Keogh for grinding out a solid century. Let's hope he kicks on from here. IMHO he needs to be chosen on batting merit alone because I don't think he takes enough wickets to be considered an all-rounder.

I hope we get the last batting point but we really should have cruised to it. Annoying that we seem to fall short time and time again in this regard, and it has cost us dear in the past. We have batting well and needed to be careful for a long time but became overcautious this morning for too long. Taylor only had 1 run from his first 20 deliveries. Any batsman should be able to get at least a few singles from that number of balls when you know you need to speed things up a bit.

[Countyman]

Yes, it looks as though we need 6 runs off 4 balls for the full batting points. Uncharacteristic innings, in the circumstances, from Rossington, 35 from 91 deliveries with only 2 boundaries.

[saintcobbler]

Hi All. I don't live in Northants so how do I get basic cricket news, like did we get the 5th batting point or what are the table positions? Only one division table is shown on the BBC web site and cannot find any other source.

[onemorerun]

Yes we did get the fifth batting point, off the last possible ball, with a scampered bye to the wicket-keeper. Talk about cutting it fine.

After that the match drifted through another two or three pointless hours, but we got 15 points to Kent's 14.

I generally look up the tables on Cricinfo, though unless you follow the link from the match score, they can be a pain to find the first time, I recall.

As for the match, it all comes flooding back from previous years! Vasconcelos easily our best bat, disappointment from Wakeley, opposition tail scoring heavily, us falling asleep and (almost) missing a bonus point.

Good to see the board active again, after a very quiet winter!

[Countyman]

Hi All. I don't live in Northants so how do I get basic cricket news, like did we get the 5th batting point or what are the table positions? Only one division table is shown on the BBC web site and cannot find any other source.

As onemorerun says, Cricinfo provides the details, although the site can prove somewhat fiddly to navigate...

https://www.espncricinfo.com

Click on the Live Scores link, then Live Scores Home at the top of the dropdown list. After selecting the relevant match link, click again for the ball-by-ball details. I think that should just about get you there!