BristolBear wrote:

Harmer showing Bess and Lintott how it’s done.
It’s a pitch made for him, and he’s using it.

Am still curious as to how the ECB think it’s fair to hold Woakes out completely knowing he won’t play at all. But let Lawrence play Essex’s first innings score a huge hundred and then substitute him, even though again they know he won’t be playing.

It's not at all fair of course, we will still lose this game but there's a definite bias towards and against certain players and counties.

I did think Essex may have avoided imposing the follow on and batted out today and possibly an hour in the morning. That would gert them at least 400 ahead and ensured Warks batted last. Now we will bat all tomorrow and in to the 4th day getting about 150 ahead when we will take advantage of the 4th day wicket and win by 35 runs. Think positive!!

Well at least we haven’t yet collapsed in the second innings as I expected us to. The turn that Critchley and Harmer are getting is worrying though!

I am making no predictions or hints at what is to come. I have been chastised by coolerking and quite rightly so, I must know my place.

A lot of misfortune this match. Lost the toss, missing a key batsman, missing the established number one spinner, usual situation with Woakes. Having said that, this might be costly. I don't expect Warks to catch Surrey, but I'd be disappointed to lose ground on Hampshire to lose grip on second. Weather in London has been a lot cooler today and dar clouds around, a random shower for a few hours might help to pick up a draw and got to hope their bowlers tire a lot before that ...

That’s twice now Rhodes has been set, has looked comfortable, and manages to edge one behind.
At least it seemed a decent ball this time, unlike the first innings. But really needed more than 40 from him. It’s gonna be hard enough to get in on this pitch against Harmer, so got to stay there when set.

Goodness me how on earth do you play that? Shame, Yates was looking good.

This is going to be quite a painful defeat.

Innings defeat avoided.

At least they have shown some fight late on..........an innings defeat would not have done morale much good.

It’s a bit frustrating, as it seems like we weren’t far off being in a winning position. 50 more runs in the first innings, or 50 less for them and we’d have had a shout.

That was entertaining.

As mentioned above we allowed 75 more runs & scored 75-100 less than we should have and this game is then up for grabs

We are not winning the title, we have a couple of gaps to fill yet but it is good to see Mousley, Yates & Bethell in the runs to an extent.

We need a quick, accurate bowler who can hit the deck.........a Norwell fired up and fit would be good but I just cant see that happening for a full season. Ironically, Brookes has the make up to be that bowler but just cant push on to the next level. You can see what might be there in bursts, it will probably come out when he is 26/27 and moved on somewhere else.

I think scoreboard pressure and all those overs in the field have done the batsmen over this game. I saw a Warks tweet that the last innings in Notts and the first here, back to back FC games, albeit with t20s in between, was 349 overs. I wonder if this had made the difference? It seemed having the liberty of not having to block to the death as the game was lost helped Mousley, Bess and Lintott get those runs.

Top order let us down. Batters 1-7 scored one fifty in 14 knocks.

Batting on days 3&4 on that pitch was always going to be tough.
And the toss was huge. The pitch was at its best to bat on day 1, and we had to field for a day and bit, on the hottest day of the year.

I suspect it would have been different the other way round, but not sure how much so because Harmer showed the huge gulf in class between himself and our spinners.

Pity to lose that seeing as Surrey are struggling and could very well lose tomorrow. With a game in hand, it could have made things interesting. Surrey, even if they end up winning are vulnerable at times but seem to have people in their side to get them out of trouble but it can't work every time. That was a strange looking Warwickshire side and it didn't fill me with confidence even before the toss.

Definitely an odd side and not just because of the parachuted in Bess. We always knew we were a bit light with the bat and asking Bethell to be Hain for a game was always a bit of an imbalance (although with 2x 30 he wasn't the worst batsman). I'm not going to look it up but how many CC sides look balanced when playing two spinners?

paulbear wrote:

Pity to lose that seeing as Surrey are struggling and could very well lose tomorrow. With a game in hand, it could have made things interesting. Surrey, even if they end up winning are vulnerable at times but seem to have people in their side to get them out of trouble but it can't work every time. That was a strange looking Warwickshire side and it didn't fill me with confidence even before the toss.

We Left when Burgess was out after a couple of balls, forfeited a night in the Premier Inn and headed for home so missed the only real resistance shown by Warwickshire players in three days. It is obvious that the toss was crucial but we have to be a bit more creative than shown this week. Bess bowled nearly 30 overs on day one, one maiden and went for four and a half an over never beating the bat. Mousley had taken four wickets 36 hours before the start of this game (admittedly with a white ball) and never got to turn his arm over, Yates bowled 2 overs for 4 runs? The start of day two was also strange in that we were presented with the only serious cloud cover of the three days and yet we started with Bess bowling from the river end whilst Hassan Ali stood scratching his head on the boundary with the ball twice going over his head for six as the Essex tail chased their final batting point. The endless conferences between Rhodes and Davies, with the apparent decision reached being “leave it as it is” was depressing. Batting on the same wicket an hour or so later we managed to make things look very different indeed, Davies still plays some very strange shots at times, deciding to lift his bat to avoid it getting in the way of the ball hitting the stumps is a decision that I hope he reflects on going forward.