Head Coach John Sadler rued the lack of first innings runs as Derbyshire went down to Essex at The 3aaa County Ground this week.
Sadler praised the efforts of Tom Milnes, who claimed figures of 6-93, his best for Derbyshire, and Captain Billy Godleman who hit his third first-class century of the summer, but it wasn’t enough as the hosts were defeated by an innings and 62 runs.
After a difficult first innings in which the hosts were dismissed for 165 in response to Essex’s 530-0 declared, Sadler said that spending a day and a half in the field put pay to their hopes of chasing down the runs.
Sadler said: “After spending a day-and-a-half in the field it was always going to be hard chasing those runs down but we didn’t bat well first innings and we’ve been comprehensively beaten.
“We have spoken about first innings runs and we’ve not been good enough really in the last few games and that’s what sets the game up so we know that’s crucial and we’ve not fired.
“I’m really delighted for Tom Milnes. He’s worked hard and deserves his opportunity in the last couple of games and he’s taken his chance. To get six on that pitch was a fantastic effort.
“No one works harder than Tom. He’s a had a bit of misfortune with injury halfway through the season and he’s fought his way back in and earned the right to play.
“Billy played brilliantly and was disappointed to get out just after getting that hundred. He wanted to get a really big one and the one thing he has in abundance is fight and resilience which he showed again.
“We’ve got a prolonged break now so we’ll take a step back and regroup and think and plan for the next match against Gloucestershire in 16 days time.”
Wayne Madsen added: “We came up against a good team and they played well in the first innings. The wicket probably played how we wanted it to and we would have liked to have batted first playing the spinners but they scored too many runs which put us under pressure.
“We didn’t get enough in our first dig and it was disappointing. there are a lot of lessons to learn from the way they played and the way we played as well.
“First innings runs are crucial and on occasions we’ve missed out on that and haven’t scored enough. The other thing from our point of view is taking 20 wickets and we haven’t been able to do that and we need to find a way of doing that.
“We have a few injuries at the moment which is why we had to play on this type of wicket and with the extra spinner. We only had three seamers so we are a bit light on bowlers but you have to make do with what you’ve got and unfortunately we weren’t quite on the mark in this game.”
