With the story of the game being how the home spinners strangled the visitors into virtual submission as the Greens were bowled out for 161 after a bright start from their top order, Guernsey skipper Ollie Nightingale made a blunt observation about those middle overs and one particular reason behind the issue.
‘We’re not trying to slow down, we’re not trying to not rotate the strike, they bowled really well, bowled a bit slower than us, probably bowled better areas for longer, and it’s really tricky,’ he said, before adding the telling remark.
‘We don’t play much 50-over cricket, so actually trying to work out a tempo of how to go about it is really tough. So massively disappointing, but actually fairly unsurprising.’
In contrast, when his opposite number Chuggy Perchard was asked what he felt a testing target for his side to chase down would have been, his answer revealed the sort of exposure that Nightingale and co have been lacking now for years.
‘We would have had to work very hard for 240, but we’ve been playing quite a bit of cricket up here at Grainville, 50 overs with some strong sides coming over like the UAE and Nepal. In those games, we were scoring about 300 as par, but those wickets were a touch flatter than this one,’ he said.
‘So I think about 240 would have been a 50/50 game. But the spinners today were absolutely superb, they squeezed the life out of Guernsey there.’
And to add further context to the situation, Jersey have the ICC Cricket World Cup Challenge League A coming up in Kenya next month and should they progress from that, which is highly likely, they will play in the Cricket World Cup Qualifier Play-Off event in December.
Such a schedule is extremely demanding and some Jersey players have even given up employment to be available for them, but it also shows how far advanced they are in the One-Day International format compared to Guernsey, who last played in an ICC 50-over competition in 2017.
The Sarnians have undoubtedly made progress in T20 cricket because that is their only focus now when it comes to ICC tournaments, but for the youngsters who impressed over the longer white-ball format in the Under-19s this summer, with two of them making their Inter-Insular debuts on Saturday in Ed Robinson and Freddie Forshaw, as they joined fellow teenagers Charlie Forshaw and Harry Johnson in the side, their development is now in danger of being stunted as the Island men’s squad currently only have the annual clash with the old enemy to aim for in that format.
Again in Nightingale’s assessment of the newcomers, he emphasised that they were there on merit rather than for the experience.
‘We don’t pick them because they’re young, we pick them because they’re the best cricketers.
‘Hopefully they learn lots, hopefully the senior guys learn lots and we know what we need to do. We just need to get better and do it.’
Perchard, who is blessed to have so much strength in depth at his disposal that Jersey coped without some star names such as Asa Tribe, Jonty Jenner, Nick Greenwood, Julius Sumerauer and Josh Lawrenson, believes there are promising signs for the Greens in their fresh faces.
‘I’m really hopeful for Guernsey cricket. It’s great to blood these young lads and there are some talented lads there.
‘The Forshaw brothers are very decent players, Ed Robinson, I’ve not seen much of him to be fair, but he shaped up quite nicely, and hopefully there’s a few more good young ones to come through for Guernsey and they can start climbing up the ranks.
‘Hopefully they improve, but just not so much to beat us,’ he added with a wry grin.
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