Selection Time

The start of the 2011 county championship season is just hours away now and always on the supporters mind is the selection of the team for match one vs Kent at Chelmsford.

It's almost certain to predict the first 9 names on the team sheet -

Godleman

Cook

Mickleburgh

Bopara

Walker

Pettini

Foster *+

Phillips

Masters

With Ryan 'Tendo' ten Doeschate and Owais Shah at the IPL and Tom Westley at uni, the batting selections are a formality with the bonus of having Cookie and Ravi around for the start of the season and without Westley to provide some off-spinners Tim Phillips will surely play to cover this part of the bowling attack.

Thus the final two positions will come down to a choice of 2 from 4 seamers - 

Chambers

Napier

Wright

Topley

It would appear that although Graham Napier has recovered from his back injury, he's still not quite ready yet to return to championship action and with no overseas player (news suggests an overseas opening test bowler will make championship match two at Lord's vs Middlesex) the task of picking two players is now between just three men.

Maurice Chambers is surely a must and although has only just recovered from injury himself during the winter is the quickest of the bowlers on the staff and can ruffle a few Kent feathers.

So we're left a choice of fellow blogger Chris Wright and young 17 year old left-arm seamer Reece Topley.  Although I'm a huge fan of Wrighty he hasn't yet hit the straps with only two wickets in three championship style pre-season matches whilst Topley impressed yours truely at Fenners last week and has captured three wickets in each of the matches at Fenners and on tour vs Warwickshire.

It might be a gamble to go with Topley - after all at 17 he'd be restricted in the number of overs he can bowl in a spell/day and of course he's young and raw but being a left-armer swing bowler who keeps the ball pitched up and bowls wicket to wicket for me it's a gamble worth taking.