It’s not time to panic – far from it – but we do need some results.
There is no denying that Friday night’s defeat at Yorkshire Vikings was disappointing.
And there is also no escaping the fact that we have now conceded 200 plus in four consecutive games.
We have been involved in some high scoring games in this year’s Vitality Blast – and there have been some high scores right across the board in the competition.
We definitely have the players to do it on paper and we’ve been bowling well through the middle and at the death, we just need to make our opponents scrap and fight more.
Grant Elliott
We need to restrict our opponents much better – and the area we really need to work on is the first six overs.
Teams are very visibly targeting those first six overs. If you can get a couple of wickets in this period and restrict your opponent to 10 to 15 runs, that gives you the basis to build from.
As it was on Friday, Yorkshire were 92-1 after those 36 balls – and that is always going to be a mountain to climb. At one stage they were on course for a world record total in T20 cricket after what was, you have to say, some devastating hitting.
We definitely have the players to do it on paper and we’ve been bowling well through the middle and at the death, we just need to make our opponents scrap and fight more than they are having to do at the moment.
I don’t like to talk about results because it’s more of a process. You focus on the performance and the results will come, but we’ve put ourselves under a bit of pressure now and accept that we do need results if we are to threaten the latter stages of the competition.
The guys are preparing well and batting well, so I can’t really fault the team. I’ve said before, T20 is an unpredictable format and we’ve had guys play some serious innings against us. Tom Kohler-Cadmore came back into The Vikings team against us and smashed 73 off 30 balls.
It’s not all gloomy. We blew Notts Outlaws out of the water and beat Yorkshire Vikings at Edgbaston as well. The tied game against Northamptonshire Steelbacks was a bit of a freak. If we could’ve just got an extra point out of that one then we’d be sitting prettier.
We’ll regroup, train well and come out fighting for every run. It’s time for us to show our heart. I have absolutely no doubt that the spirit is there amongst this group of lads.
The Bears fans have been great and I know they’ll stick with us. Keep the faith. We were in a similar position last year – and look what happened there.
We have three big games coming up now in quick succession against Leicestershire Foxes, Derbyshire Falcons and Northamptonshire Steelbacks. Things could look very different at the end of this hectic week.
