Has signed for Worcestershire, another talented young player goes.

That's a shame, another local lad leaving having not been given a proper chance. This happens time and time again. We tend to prefer signing players in favour of backing our own.

Sorry but never rated him to be honest. If he is an all rounder noticed that he hasn't been given the ball in the one day cup so far. Good fielder though.

My issue is that he is probably the only one who never got given a proper chance, he's scored big runs in the 2's over the past season and a half. I never really noted him as a bowler, he's bowled less and less in the 2's, his batting has greatly improved though no doubt.

I would have liked to have seen him given a few more chances. I'm not so sure that there have been too many other home grown young players who have been wrongly released and have gone on to succeed elsewhere, though I'm happy to be put right on that.

Was he released?

He was a free agent at the end of the season, Worcestershire made a better offer.
He'll be working under coaches that he worked with as a junior, so they will beleive in his ability.

I guess we won't know if he was offered another contract and turned it down or whether he wasn't offered one.

A real shame to lose such a promising young cricketer. Strange comments from Robinson saying how good he is but not having the opportunities, if he is that good surely he should be given them!
Best of luck to Ethan with the Pears.

Think this one has to be looked at from the lad's perspective. A need to get out from under his big brothers feet? Also stick around at Edgbaston and with the talent available here he maybe gets a couple of Championship starts next season half a dozen one day cup games and fills in where necessary in the Blast. Bears can't just hoard players - we're not Surrey.

For Ethan's benefit he makes the sideways move to another excellent first class county Worcestershire who may well be in the same division as Bears next season. He'll get more opportunities to play all formats with greater regularity which at this stage in his career he needs

He's just played a major role in maintaining Knowle and Dorridge's lead at the top of the Birmingham League with 1 Saturday to go next week with an unbeaten century to steer his side home at Barnards Green.

Only Moseley can stop them now - they have to beat Shrewsbury and also hope very decent Kenilworth Wardens side upset K&D

We are letting a good young player go it has to be said

Ethan making an impact Down Under:
https://wccc.co.uk/worcestershire-signing-ethan-brookes-smashes-146-in-t20-fixture/

He's had a cracking season for Worcester - with the bat and the ball (3 for 34 off 12 overs today, against a strong Essex lineup), in both red and white ball. Another example of one we let go too soon, or didn't give enough first team chances to?

You may be right about his lack of opportunities; but I'm not sure that I would have described him as having a cracking season. His 3-34 today were his only first class wickets this season. He did pretty well in the Blast but across all competitions has scored 582 runs at an average of 23 and taken 20 wickets at just under 30 - OK but not tremendous. I think it's too early to say whether or not he will make it as anything other than a fringe player.

The_Lickey_Banker wrote:

He's had a cracking season for Worcester - with the bat and the ball (3 for 34 off 12 overs today, against a strong Essex lineup), in both red and white ball. Another example of one we let go too soon, or didn't give enough first team chances to?

Both.

I think after a iffy start he's grown into the season quite well and seems to be impacting games more and more. He's certainly playing a lot more than I thought he might have. He looks a canny bowler. We know he's an incredible fielder.

Seam bowling all rounders don't grow on trees.

We've let a fair few homegrown lads go the last 2 winters. We're not a really a county who seems to back academy developed players as much as other counties do. We only ever seem to have 2 or 3 homegrown lads in our XI, most other counties have 5 or 6 minimum. Yorkshire had 10 in their side last week.

Lamb, Brookes, Brookes, Garrett, Johal, no great shakes you may say but 24 year old OHD wasn't pulling up many trees either and whilst all these lads got released dross like Benjamin and Miles remained on the books.

We seem to have an over reliance on recruiting/poaching from elsewhere as opposed to putting time into players we already have.

We're always scratching around for seam bowlers because we don't have a steady pipeline of homegrown seamers already coming through our academy, it magnifies our injury list.

I think the problem isn't that we have released players that we should have kept, it's that we somehow haven't managed to produce players (seam bowlers especially) that have made the grade. Chris Woakes was the last home grown seam bowler to establish himself and his debut was in 2006!
I think that OH-D is in lots of ways the exception that proves the rule - a bowler who has got better since he passed 30 and, as we all know, the finest batter to come out of Yorkshire, well ahead of Joe Root and Harry Brook.
By the way, I don't agree with labelling as "dross" players who are professional sportsmen doing their best to survive in a tough environment. Miles has, agreed, been a disappointment and Chris Benjamin still has a long way to go to justify the chances he has been given. It was rumoured that Benjamin might move to Kent, which could explain why he hasn't been selected to play against them.

One thing i've noticed is that, unlike several other counties, including Glous, Worcs, Glam and Somerset, we don't seem to get many players from the local private schools with good cricket programs.

Ethan scored his first first class century today, and helped secure Div 1 status for Worcestershire.