INTRODUCTION

In yesterday’s post I ventured predictions on the outcomes of the five Royal London Cup matches that had reached their half way stage at the time I was posting. Today, with the next Royal London Cup fixtures taking place tomorrow I am going to use the main body of this post to reveal the actual outcomes of yesterday’s matches.

PREDICTION VERSUS FACT – HOW I DID

Some people (especially fans of whyevolutionsistrue) will recognize that this section heading is a riff on the title of Jerry Coyne’s second popular bestseller, Faith Versus Fact. I will start with the two matches I called incorrectly:

Gloucestershire v Surrey – Gloucestershire 235, Surrey 88, Gloucestershire won by 147 runs
An unconscionable collapse by Surrey. The two bowlers who did the principal damage, slow left-armer Tom Smith with 3-7 and medium pacer Chris Liddle with 3-17 do not have overall records that suggest them to be destroyers, so it is hard to understand how Surrey who appeared to have done the hard work by restricting their oppponents to 235 could make such an almighty hash of their own of batting.

Essex v Glamorgan – Essex 326-7, Glamorgan 146, Essex won by 180 runs
I made my prediction for this one based on the ridiculous scoring that had happened during the championship game at Cardiff a few days earlier. Unfortunately, having demonstrated in that one that they cannot bowl or catch, Glamorgan this time showed that they cannot handle pressure, with only a late 36 from Marchant de Lange reducing the margin to under 200 runs (he came in at 82-7). Siddle and Bopara did good work with the ball for Essex.

Now for the ones I called correctly:

Durham v Northamptonshire – Durham 342-5, Northamptonshire 270
A comfortable enough win, although one of the less one-sided results of the day. Jason Holder (86) and Alex Wakely (66)_batted fairly well, but no one else did. For Durham 20 year old medium pacer Matty Potts took 4-62, 26 year old medium-fast bowler Matt Salisbury 3-51 and 19 year old slow left armer Liam Trevaskis partially redeemed himself for his blob with 2-65. 

Yorkshire v Leicestershire – Yorkshire 379-7, Leciestershire 166
An obvious call, but not even I was expecting the final result to be this much of a thrashing. Four of Leciestershire’s batters got into the twenties, but the highest score for them was Cosgrove‘s 42. South African born fast bowler Matt Pillans took 5-29, England left-arm medium pacer David Willey had 2-26 and legspinner Josh Poysden took 2-26 to outshine England man Adil Rashid who went wicketless.

Lancashire v Worcestershire – Worcestershire 367, Lancashire 242
Even more one-sided than the final margin suggests, given that Lancashire were 191-8 at one point – a tail wag from Steven Croft (32 not out), Jimmy Anderson (4) and Matthew Parkinson (10) assisted them. The real batters failed to provide a single really major innings between them – five of the top six got into the twenties, but the top score was a mere 54, from (I hope) ex-England man Keaton Jennings. The wickets were widely shared around, with no one having outstanding bowling figures.

That leaves the match that I did not call as it was too early, which was:

Kent v Hampshire – Hampshire 310-9, Kent 220
While saying it was too early to attempt to call this one I also said that if Hampshire could get up around the 300 mark I would make them favourites, while if Kent held them to about 250 I would make them favourites. The first scenario happened, and Hampshire duly won, but there is no way be sure (especially given that every side that batted first won on the day, and that batting first tends to be even more advantageous when floodlights come into play) that Kent would have been successful chasing the lower total. Therefore I do not claim this as a correct call but also do not accept it as a wrong call – I said it was too early to call, and I hold to that. For Hampshire Sam Northeast (ex of Kent) scored 105 not out, while List A debutant Matt Milnes took 5-79 for Kent. For Kent Zak Crawley top scored with 49, while the margin was reduced to double figures rather than treble by the lower-order efforts of Stevens (30), Podmore (40) and Milnes (26). Chris Wood, Kyle Abbott and bits ‘n’pieces man Liam Dawson each took two wickets.

Thus I was right with three predictions out of five. These results demosntrate the danger of formulaic thinking – many one-day captains on winning the toss put their opponents in without even thinking about it, but every single team who batted first on this day ended up victorious.

LINKS AND PICTURES

First, a teaser from brilliant, although I make it more difficult than they did by removing the multi-choice element:

To lead into my usual sign off we have a selection of closely related pieces, starting with two from Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK. 

• It is time for accountancy to put climate change at the heart of financial reporting
• Renewable energy could fuel the planet

I do not often link to Newspaper front pages, but this from the Mirror, which I saw by way of twitter (which I have formatted as a link so that you can read the article) had to be included.

Finally, for those of my readers who are UK Citizens there is a petition about this issue on the official government petitions site, which I urge you to join me in signing and sharing – screenshot/link below:

Now for today’s photographs: