Voll Blau

What do most of them deserve to be hanged for?

Wow, what an original opinion.

You'll be unsurprised to learn my father-in-law really rated it when I took him in.

Just sipping a Harvey's Sussex Best at the Betjeman Arms in St Pancras. Would have popped out of the station but it's raining and I forgot my coat. A pint to make you glad we've got Brighton away to look forward to again.

In fairness, given we gained parity over the course of two innings, they probably weren't far off! Big compliment to our batting that they felt that was what they needed to put the game beyond us.

Top effort. Wouldn't have backed many Leicestershire sides of recent years to get something out of that.

Yeah, get that. He does build pressure for his teammates to capitalise on.

How did Robinson look? Saw him at Derbyshire a couple of weeks ago and didn't see too much to suggest he'd be the obvious heir to Anderson.

Plenty of players seem to enjoy being involved? Never said anyone against them was anti atmosphere. Try again.

Sad how many in here are against people expressing joy. Can't beat seeing people going loopy and celebrating with their team's players. That said, there genuinely hasn't been a home game in recent years that would have warranted one at our place.

Bochum fans sing "Kühe! Schweine! Bielefeld!" It'd be like us singing "Cows! Pigs! Norwich!", if we hated Norwich. There's none of this "oh, we can only have one rival and don't care about you" pretence nonsense over there. If you're within 100km and the context is right, then you'll consider any team local rivals for a day.

Yeah, think Fortuna will buck the trend and get promoted too.

Classic Bochum. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Karma for the opposite of that happening last season.

Feel that toss decision comes with the territory of knowing our attack haven't got 20 wickets between them. Mad how much we miss Wright.

Only the London clubs got higher aggregate attendances than Somerset in 2023. They're an anomoly, in that they're the only cricket club in this country who are more popular than any football or rugby team within their catchment area, which is also huge. No bad thing, by the way. I really admire it.

Interesting to see Swindells involved. Just so hard to see how he gets a red-ball gig.

A half of Minnow pale ale from the Little Brewery at The Star in West Leake. Wrong side of the border but not a bad little place. Still felt like a locals pub despite being in the middle of nowhere and clearly having half an eye on food and coffee sales. Charnwood Salvation and Vixen on too, which is always nice to see.

I'm a broken record on this, but Bell-Drummond deserves his go this summer. Hard to see it not happening. He'd be 15 caps deep already in most eras.

Shires at Peatling Parva still delivers.

Music is an absolute rip-off of Salva Mea by Faithless.

Heard from a well-placed source that this is genuinely what he's done.

This is one of the many, many holes in the ECB's plan that was obvious from the start. They were banking on the rest of the world getting on board with the idea of yet another new form of the game. They've since just lied and bullshitted their way to the position we're at now and, yet again, all of English cricket is going to suffer in the long term.

Yeah, I never used to be that keen on the place but it's grown on me recently. The cathedral's obviously stunning too.

A bottle of Moongazer Stubblestack. Lager but definitely had a Norfolk twist on it. Must be the barley?

Should have reported Viktoria Köln v Preußen Münster two weeks ago. Finished 3-5 after Preußen had been 3-1 down! Was in the away end as I've got a soft spot for them, so great atmosphere as you'd expect - especially as they've been chasing a double promotion. Proper "Bierdusches" for the fourth and fifth. Weird ground set in pleasant parkland in the east of Cologne, so worth a visit. Away end was an open terrace the length of the pitch with a standard lower league German main stand opposite. Home end was a temporary open terrace that only ran half way behind the goal, with a beer tent taking up the other half. The other end was another temporary structure, a double decker of executive boxes, to compete the Subbuteo ground aesthetic. Gaffel Kölsch was refreshing enough as the beer of choice.