Preview of 2016 Season

High Hopes

Like most Nottinghamshire Members, I would presume, this Nottsviewer is looking forward to the coming season with varying degrees of expectation, hope and optimism.

With a squad of the calibre that Mick Newell has at his disposal, expectations are high, if not stratospheric that the season can culminate in the winning of some silverware. Gone are the days when the season would start and you knew that somewhere along the line Notts would be humiliated, embarrassingly and would get beaten on regular basis by practically every county and end up propping-up the rest at the bottom of the table. However, with the expectation, that the strong squad will deliver the goods to the faithful, comes the pressure. We've all seen that when quarter / semi-finals arrive, some sides deal better than others with that pressure.

Last season no one foresaw that Brett Hutton would come-on so far and that Luke Wood would continue to improve at such a rate as he has since 2014. Jake Ball too, came-on further leaps and bounds. Add to those bowlers, Stuart Broad (at the start of the Championship season), Harry Gurney, Luke Fletcher and new import Jackson Bird and you would hope we might be able to bowl sides out twice. The impact of the new toss arrangements might mean a number of differing scenarios happening, time will tell and trends will develop; if the ECB like those trends will be the main driving force behind the decision to keep the new arrangement or to chuck-out and revert to more traditional 50/50 odds of a coin toss.

The implications of the toss rule will perhaps have less of an impact on Notts’ silverware winning than how poor form and International call-up decimate Notts’ batting line-up. The re-emergence of Chris Read, saviour of the top order flops, was one of last year’s highlights but those flops are all too frequent. Getting yourself out seems to be a bad habit that the batsmen concerned can’t kick. On paper with a Test pair of openers and Test Match blooded middle order batsmen, there ought to be some discipline but on occasion last season, they let themselves down from time to time.

So with expectations high, who or what will be the biggest stumbling block to an all-conquering Nottinghamshire in 2016, other than themselves? The short answer is Yorkshire. Whatever Notts have, Yorkshire have it too and then a little bit more of it on top. Beyond Yorkshire, Warwickshire could challenge in the Championship and Middlesex have shown that they are competitive in the longest format as well.

I would hope that this season in the Championship, the last of the 16 games championships, that Notts will get off to a flyer and if we sustain good form and England doesn't call too many on their mobiles, that by September we’d still be pushing Yorkshire and others to get over the winning line first.

The shortest format is impossible to predict. Outlaws are strong but it only takes one opposition player to derail you on the day. Look at Chris Gayle the other day in the World Cup against England or last season Umar Akmal at Trent Bridge for Leicestershire. However, Outlaws will again be expected to reach the quarter finals, that’s a minimum requirement and I’m optimistically hoping that they won’t mess it up.

As others have said before, Outlaws are made for the One Day Cup. We've got everything required to take it to a Lord’s final. If it wasn't for Ben Stokes in 2014 and Kumar Sangakarra in 2015, Outlaws would have made Lord’s their second home for three Septembers on the trot. I hope we’d get to the knock-out stages again in 2016 but beyond that is perhaps down to individual performances on those days and if key personnel are allowed to be available.

Players to watch out for; Harry Gurney and James Taylor or perhaps Luke Wood and Will Root, who knows (?)– that’s why we enjoy watching and anticipate the arrival of our new membership cards and the start of the season. DDG