Hi, Well a mixed week for me. One my Cup match easily enough, batted first and stuck 317-3 on them - Staveley 123 (130), Dunfield 60 (56), Oli 45 (70), and Wynne-Willson and Carless 39* and 32* respectively at a run a ball. Then bowled them out for 85, Burke 4/18 (5.0), Crick 3/19 (7.0)
So imagine my consternation when I look at my ratings, to find a cat-cack pie of Med/Woe/Abs - Med/Use/Woe! I expected to take a bit of a hit with only fair fitness and with my confidence reset to happy, but come on?! The fielding I can take, my players are far too fond of pies and Marlborough Reds for their own good, and most of them couldn't stop a pig in a passage. But my middle order contains two Resps and three Comps, all with Sublime fitness - Surely that's got to be worth more than Woe, whatever my team fitness and confidence?
Then my YP had, as expected, Stephen Hawkin-like stats, and was promptly released to pursue a life of petty crime.
But then some good news! Despite being seeded above me, I've got, what looks on paper, to be another walk-over in the 2nd round of the cup, with nothing whatsoever better than Woe in their ratings - Cue some spectacular egg on face! But with a home draw in the cup, plus a home league match Friday week, followed by another probable home cup match, I decided to finally bite the bullet and get my ground improvements done. Though this does in itself highlight an absence of any long-term strategic planning on my part, as only last week I hired three financial advisers to earn me some interest on my 334k, and now I've gone and blown 148k of it on getting the ground up to a capacity of 10500.
A few useful pops in Conc, Cons and Stam in training this week, Mullins is up to Resp Cons, which will be really useful when he pops to Med Bowl, which hopefully won't be too far off now. Haldane, the Aussie batsman-in-waiting is up to Feeb Conc, which again will be V. handy when he pops to Resp and finally replaces Wynne-Willson in the starting XI.
BTW, does anyone understand how the individual fitness thing works? After my Cup match everyone stayed at Sublime, except for Staveley who's down to invigorated. Now presumably that's because he opened the batting and scored a ton - But what I'm not sure of is will putting him down the order to say No4, 5 or 6 help recover his fitness? Or do I have to leave him out of the side altogether? And are the fitness effects cumulative on all-rounders? - i.e. does a WK/batsman or a bowling No6 lose fitness quicker than a specialist in one area?
Later, Trev
