Dexter stands down as captain

Clicked onto the Middlesex website this morning and was shocked to see this piece of news. While there were a few rumblings about Dexy's captaincy, I don't think anyone really saw him standing down now coming.

First - to clarify what the news is. Dexy is to take a break from four-day captaincy to focus on his batting. He still remains as club captain (so would captain any 40 over or T20 games) but for the time being Chris Rogers is taking over as captain of the four-day team.

Am not sure if Neil is going to actually be in the team for the next couple of week / tomorrow, but the fact that this news has come out suggests that he won't be in the team. Sadly, his batting form (as I alluded to in the last blog) just hasn't been up to it at the back end of last year or in the start of this, and either Neil has decided, or it's been decided for him, that he isn't justifying his place in the team, so he's likely to miss out (though that will be confirmed or not when the squad for tomorrow is announced).

It's a shame for Neil that things have got to this, especially after what I thought was a brilliant game as skipper last week. Gus Fraser even mentioned Dexy's tactical astuteness in his review of the game, saying "I thought Neil Dexter captained the team superbly. His tactics on the final morning were excellent. He picked the right time to have the field in and the right time to have fielders saving four. His introduction of Toby Roland-Jones was inspired too. It was Toby who dismissed Rory Hamilton-Brown in his first over", so any issues are clearly down to matters other than his skipper-ship.

In the short term, I would guess that Strauss would come in 'like-for-like' as a batsman for Dexter, although they may decide to go with the structure (6 specialist batsmen, keeper and 4 seamers) that I floated in the last blog, with Adam London / Paul Stirling taking Dex's role.

In the long term however, things could be tough for Dex. Once a captain gives anyone else a go it's tough to recover, and if Bucky does well then he may well get the nod full-time. And if whoever takes Dexy' batting place does well, then it could well be tough to even break into the team, let alone get back as captain.

It will be a time of upheaval for the rest of the boys with the captain suddenly going, so hopefully they can pull together and take the momentum of Sunday morning into the game against Durham.