Madsen and Luis Reece both batted very well, but one of them needed to continue on and bat through most of the innings. When they were dismissed in quick succession, quickly followed by Leus du Plooy and Anuj Dal, it left Nye Donald to bat with the tail, which simply couldn’t score quick enough.

It was a poor effort after a scintillating stand between Reece and Madsen, which gave genuine hopes of a score north of 200. 118-1 in eleven overs became 131-4 in 14, impetus lost and never recovered.  As I wrote last night, 180 is only par these days and not good enough against a team with such depth in batting.

Good bowling was essential, but Scrimshaw and Watt bowled six overs between them for 92 runs. There is no way back from such figures, though I was surprised that Luis Reece wasn’t asked to bowl in the circumstances. Clarke took Derbyshire apart and batted beautifully, as later did Montgomery. 

It isn’t helping that Haider Ali is batting in binary at present. It is all very well being aggressive, but  there is a fine line between that and reckless. Tonight’s shot to get out was careless and unnecessary. Overseas player or not, supporters will rightly ask whether the needs of the team might be better served with either Harry Came or Tom Wood at the top of the innings. They cannot do worse.

Ali, Chappell and McKiernan bowled steadily, but there were simply not enough runs to play with, the others having haemorrhaged runs.

I wrote last week that we could easily play well in our first two games and lose them both. We didn’t play badly against Lancashire, but tonight too many players froze on the big occasion.

Maybe some of them are simply not good enough to go to the level of our expectations.

The next few matches will shed more light on that.