Yeah he's still working his way back. He'll bowl worse than that and walk of with 3 in the future.

Not the best of starts, we do seem to struggle early on in the season.

Outstanding innings from Lamb considering he walked out there at 41/4.

Yes, well done to Matt Lamb and Sam Hain. Dan Mousley has got off to a solid start.

Two very good partnerships today considering the start. Watching this on TV am I right in saying it is a very poor crowd. When the camera has featured the main stand (I can't call it a pavillion) or Section 9 there is hardly a sole in sight. Please tell me there were many watching from inside.

Crowd was okay up to and around the lunch interval (as good as previous days) but it was much cooler than Friday and it became more and more clouded over in the afternoon plus football, golf and the grand national on so thinned significantly. An excellent three sessions of top class first division county championship cricket for me. On the whole their bowlers were much better than ours in terms of a threat - like yesterday there wasn't much that beat the bat - very few nicks or lbw shouts at all this game and Topley/Roach tended to just bowl full and stright with the occasional bumper - although Jordan Clark got a bit of lift and movement towards the very end a few edges began flying through the slip region - their use of the new ball alongside the game situation was more in Surrey's favour but it helped they had bowlers fit and firing to come in for 3rd and 4th spells wheras Brookes and Rhodes for me looked a bit undercooked yesterday so we had to rely on Briggs for any sort of control and save bowling OHD to death.

Maybe one for the purists but I can't see any reason for negativity about the team over the last 3 days (christ the Cricinfo bloke doing reports on Warwicks in this game sounds so downbeat about Warwicks in general - although to be fair to him he did point out England couldn't half have done with a bit of the spirit and doggedness Warwicks have shown over the past 12 months) The team is by no means the finished article but once again have fought as they did for much of last season and on this occasion against much more hyped opposition suppose that goes with the territory for Surrey hype follows them and they do look a good side perhaps too easily blunted on good pitches though

A probable draw on the cards now. That possibility looked somewhat remote at 16/3 & 41/4......so well done to the middle order.

Not that many more inside. It is disappointing but then again it was during the last game of last season v Somerset when we only had a fraction of the people I expected on such an important day. It was set up for a grand finish as we didn't rely on any other results and yet I doubt there were more than 4000 in and then they most of them went when the CC trophy was being presented. I know it's cold but I hate it when there is no cricket at weekends and here we are with some to watch and nobody really wants to come. What I have always wanted to know is how people call themselves cricket fans when they don't even bother to watch any county cricket and just come to T20. Come next year and there will be a clamour for Ashes tickets from 'Fans'. That's my first gripe of the season over with. Lamb was superb and the daunting situation he came into, didn't stop him from playing his shots and virtually scoring twice the rate of Hain.

It is a difficult sport to be invested in for the average punter though. No wonder numbers have dwindled. David Hopps article on the day's events today is a thoughtful one not so much a negative about the Bears approach/play in this case but more a lament about where the game is now. Why isn't county cricket England's summer sport anymore? For the majority of the sports public cricket hasn't even registered yet this year and that's for folks who are actually into the footy, rugger and motor racing (and yes, plenty will have T20 tickets or a ticket to a test match) let alone those who can't get into sports.

For those with somewhat of a passing interest today if they had a spare day and were at a loose end would have held little appeal either. For those who are fans from the past lapsed members etc.. they might consider today had the weather played ball or had something tangible been riding on it or had it been promoted better or even publicised at all?!! and so on and so on

For Saturdays/any days for that matter - to work it needs to be regularised for folks to get used to it over time again like folks were in the mid 1990's Saturday attendances at Edgbaston and Worcester were healthy and made up of some of the folks (older perhaps) who'd been on the Thurs/Fri topped up by a fair few hundred folks who had been at work all week

Home one Saturday, away the next and so on and so forth - it used to work. As did having a family fun day Sunday League competition and finishing day 4 of the CC match on the Monday which was a good place to have Day 4 as on occasion the game wouldn't last that long. Mainly though it was the regularity of home-away-home-away from the last week in April until the first week in September and throughout the peak summer months which helped build up a steady following of the proper game.

They could replicate this now by having a proper T20 league on Sundays if they thought about the spectators but the problem is the spectators are no longer anywhere near a priority. Centralised TV contracts are the priority these days hence the need for blocks of single formats making for a choppy stop-start kinda season with no rhyme or reason and no incentive for the average sports fan or retired person to follow in the local press or on the local radio or for young folks to get the gist of.

As a fairly young (34) supporter, a key issue is the lack of advertising

Unless you have a real passion for the club you wouldn't have a clue when we play.. what we're playing for...who are warwickshire. Birmingham bears..phoenix etc

County cricket should be shown on sky sports and really bigged up, I still believe there's an appetite for the county championship but you have to sell it ! If the counties and ECB can't be bothered, why should potential supporters ?

I'd suggest that if Davies is o come into the side for the next game, that Matt Lamb is definately not the player tp drop out.

Agree with that about the lack of advertising although it is worth pointing out that the people in charge of marketing this format of the game at Edgbaston are trying, they do lots of social media these days etc... in a desperte effort to make up for the fact we don't really have any local press around here anymore - The Evening Mail is a shell of an organisation now compared to what it was 15-20 years ago. Thank lord for local BBC radio or else Warwicks would get no coverage at all we all know the national media are only interested in Surrey, Lancs and Yorkshire that hasn't changed and likely never will. Also the marketing dept for county cricket really are fighting an uphill battle aren't they. Thursday and yesterday were bloody freezing, People don't really think about cricket until May or possibly last week in April and then it's June, July and August when county attendances used to increase as folks had no football to go to at the weekend.

Cricket also has multiple audiences and over the last 20 years its members have become steadily older and tended to be more inclined to go on a Monday or Tuesday rather than the weekend when they have other commitments - seeing the grandkids etc... Younger potential fans also tend to have less 'dossing time' to be able to get into the sport too they are saddled with debt as graduates so lose those 3-4 months in summer to while away at the cricket instead doing all sorts of casual work so wheras in the 90's you'd have maybe a couple hundred 18-30 year olds on a Saturday and younger kids going on a Sunday these age groups are in the single or at best double digit figures now.

I would love to know how many 'life memberships' the club has these days. Used to be loads in the 90's/early 2000's as folks retired from work and bought one keeping their fingers crossed that they might get 15-20 years use of it. Again there is no incentive for retired folks in 2022 to purchase life memberships anymore if cricket is mostly in April and September plus these will be folks who were in their 40's and 50's when cricket started being hidden behind a paywall so there are far fewer older people now as a % of the general population who are actually into county cricket. All this will take years to fix and sadly there seems little prospect the folks in charge of the game are interested in addressing these issues.

For me, the season starts too early into April. It used to be towards the end of April. But this has slowly got earlier and earlier due mainly to the white ball formats expanding the season virtually into October. Before long they'll be starting at the end of March!

416/9 at lunch. A commendable effort. Burgess 76 not out. COYB skittle them cheaply after lunch!

Superb by Burgess to get to 100. Imagine the pressure on that knock. If he gets out cheaply, you’d argue Davies comes straight in for him.

Now, Mousley probably misses out. Norwell and McAndrew for Miles and Brookes for me.

But Rhodes is arguably a player who whilst can’t be dropped as captain, if you asked who was most vulnerable irrelevant of captaincy, his name would probably be top of the list. Didn’t bowl well, didn’t bat well.
Love the depth of this side.

Reading PaulBear was just like old times !!! Very interesting read from Paul and the rest - combined says it all about what is wrong with CC and more importantly what is needed to correct matters. The main need is for the 4 day game to be played throughout the summer. In the old 40 over days having it on the Sunday in the middle of the 4 day game worked with decent attendances. It was only changed because the players didn't like it.
If there is one factor that sums it all up it is the players and the administrators have long forgotten they are in the entertainment business.

I guess that resilience is one of the top qualities needed by a successful team; and in that respect, the Bears come out of this match well, recovering from 16-3 and then 41-4 to 531.

A great couple of days. The middle and lower order were simply magnificent.

Ageing pedant here. When we played 40 over games on a Sunday, weren't we playing 3 day Championship games? Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and then another one on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. 32 CC games a year plus one against the Tourists and the Universities. Membership was certainly worth it then!

Meanwhile, does anyone know how close Burgess & OHD were to a record 10th wicket partnership today?

The all time record is 214 set by Nick Knight and Alan Richardson in 2002, which will take some beating. They were pretty close to a record against Surrey but I don't think they quite got there, I think that was around 125-130 set in the 1920s!