The latest county cricket census carried out by Wisden makes depressing reading for Bears fans who would hope that a club of the size of Warwickshire would be able to produce more than its fair share of home-grown talent. But:

• in a table of what percentage of players were born in the county or an adjoining one, Warwickshire came 12th out of 18 counties
• in a table showing where county players learnt their cricket, Warwickshire came 13th
• looking at the % of home-grown players, Warwickshire were 15th; and in the table of who had signed the most from other counties, the Bears were second
• overall, Warwickshire were 17th out of 18 in looking at the balance between creation and purchase of players

The New Year report card must say "could do better".

Thanks Terry, interesting article. I don't think anybody would claim Warwickshire's player development has been good. In the club's slight defence it's possible that 5 of the top seven next year will be home grown (stretching a point on Sam H). But bringing through bowlers has been terrible, would Chris Woakes be the last good bowler we developed?

I think Chris Woakes is the last bowler who came through the junior ranks and made the grade with the club - and he made his debut in 2006.

Other counties have good links with the private schools in their area, who help with the development of young players, apart from Jacob Bethell and Ben Blakemore that doesn't seem to be the case at Warwickshire.

I've been banging this drum for ages. Things seemed to stall drastically in this regard when Gilo was at the helm. We're just not a county that backs locally developed cricketers and we do poach from other counties quite a fair bit. The bowlers situation is just embarrassing and the fact that we do not have a steady pipeline of homegrown seamers coming through means our hit and miss recruitment style gets exposed.

Re. Homegrown players, we have got better though, Yates, Mousley, Shaikh, Bethell, Hain (just), Woakes etc, all first teasers when available, generally.