BristolBear wrote:

But 1 piece of bad luck results in an understrength bowling attack?
Yeah, fair enough it’s bad luck Hassan got called up.
But it’s not bad luck that they didn’t already have a second overseas signed for the start of the season. It’s not bad luck they once again signed an overseas on short notice who’s underperforming.
It’s not bad luck that they signed 2 bowlers this off season but they both only play T20.
It’s not bad luck that they’re reliant upon a hugely injury prone player. It’s not bad luck they released a homegrown bowler who now starts for Kent.

1 piece of bad luck shouldn’t result in essentially having 3 fit first team seamers, 2 now Miles is injured.

It’s a series of decisions that the club makes. Why is it other clubs seem to see this, but we don’t?

WELL SAID, Bristol!

Andy wrote:

Underperforming academy too re. bowlers.

Truth is we've relied so heavily on recruitment for seam bowlers for such a long time now because we've had such a lack of seam bowling talent coming through our own pathway. And recruiting from other counties and overseas is so tricky, sometimes we've got it right, sometimes we've got it wrong.

Craig Miles, don't mean to pick on him, he's bowled ever so well on day 2 at the Oval but goodness me he's had some poor games for us and he's definitely had plenty of chances. Into his 6th season with us now, doubt a locally developed academy lad would have been given such an amount of opportunity.

Bowling coach situation hasn't helped either. That was such a huge blow when Pop Welch left, just look at what he did with OHD. Imagine what he might have done with Brookes, Garrett or Johal?

I maintain it was weird that we let Brookes, Garrett and Johal all walk during the same off season with the majority of our other seamers being over (well over) 30 years old. Not saying any of those 3 would have made a difference here but were looking rather short pretty quickly at the moment...

Re. squad make up. Olly Stone should still be here, even if he only plays 4 or 5 red ball games a season our chances of winning 2 or 3 of those games increase immeasurably because of him. We're crying out for somebody with a bit of pace (is Che Simmons worth a look here?). We let him walk because we only offered him a white ball only deal.

Talking of recruitment and white ball only Moeen Ali, Garton and Gleeson will all be on serious money. Money that i don't think would be sanctioned on the 4day side somehow. Since start of 2022 the messaging from the club has been clear: Blast is priority.

Comes back to the naked truth though that we don't have any seamers coming through the academy to bolster the squad. Most other counties have homegrown seamer(s) in there XI, were always scratching around and trying to poach from other counties. Would imagine we'll be bringing in somebody on loan this week...

You're spot on with the Moeen, Garton and Gleeson comment, Andy. Time after time, the Club are (financially) prioritising T20, at the expense of CC and 50 over. And as for bowler development, that has gone down the pan for so long (even when Pop was here - though I don't blame him for final selection - that is down to Robinson), that there has been no successful first team seam recruit from the Development squad since CW. And the only (English qualified) successes brought in, have been 'cast offs' from Yorkshire, Lancashire (a certain left armer, who was let go), Essex (another one let go, with something still to offer) & Durham - oh, not forgetting that 'beautiful burnt out star' from Gloucestershire!

We were lucky to have Jeetan for so long but since he retired we still haven't found a reliable overseas player. Hassan Ali is superb and clearly is committed to the Bears but keeps getting international calls, so can't blame him for that.
The recruitment has been poor, we desperately needed a top strike bowler and quality middle order batsman to be able to compete with the best teams this year.
Notts brought in Pennington and Tongue, domestic players we should have been trying to sign. Instead we spend our budget on mercenary white ball bowlers.
Yet again we are reliant on the likes of Hain and OHD to carry the team in the championship. Woakes is unavailable, Rushworth old and injured, Miles is bang average and the less said about the mythical Norwell, the better.

A question about the recruitment of overseas players, which has been very poor for many years.
Are we recruiting from all the players available, or are we only sourcing players from one specific agent? If the later, why? especially as the players provided have in many cases not been "fit for purpose"

I think that the depth of our bowling attack is more of an issue than overseas recruitment to be honest. An overseas is probably only going to be around for half the season in most cases these days anyway. But this is the second or third season in a row where half our bowling attack has been injured at one time. Either we're just incredibly unlucky with injuries, or our physios/training plans aren't working, or we haven't recruited players that can last a whole season. I suspect that it's the latter, especially given the age of our seamers. I do think we've been unlucky with our overseas players as it sounds as though we had someone lined up which then fell through, and the Hassan situation is also not ideal, but we should have had other players that could step in if needed. I also wouldn't write off Jamal just yet, but he needs to start performing in the Essex game.

Highveld wrote:

A question about the recruitment of overseas players, which has been very poor for many years.
Are we recruiting from all the players available, or are we only sourcing players from one specific agent? If the later, why? especially as the players provided have in many cases not been "fit for purpose"

These are the questions. Because it’s becoming a trend now.
And Exiled, you’re right the overseas is more of an issue because the bowling is poorly made up in regards to depth. My point is sort of, you can’t do both badly. It’s a series of decisions, and we seem to have made the wrong choice at almost all of them.
Which is why the one piece of bad luck, with Hassan being selected, has a far bigger effect than it should have.
If you’re going with 1 overseas, you’ve got to have good depth, good depth means all format players, and it means being realistic about the likely fitness of your players.
Robinson isn’t a stupid person, he knows this, which is why I suspect this is much more about money and the priority being the T20. And an acknowledgment that even with the available recruitment targets last summer we couldn’t beat Surrey this year; so why not just have a squad that should keep us up, try win the T20 where we have a very good chance, and then with another season of recruitment and maybe a bigger overseas push, the squad will be ready to compete to win next year. It’s a pragmatic approach, but rather depressing.

Really good discussion, enjoying reading it!

I’d agree that the squad is pretty weak, I thought as much for the first game of the season. Batsmen as well as bowlers. Definitely dependent on a few players staying in good form.

I’m loathe to be critical of players who suffer injuries, it’s interesting that Stone has been mentioned as a player we should have kept. As far as my memory goes I recall him being injured for a large proportion of his time with us.

I would be very surprised if Norwell is kept beyond his existing contract, whenever that expires. There is a good bowler there but for whatever reason his body has not been able to stand up to the rigours of the first class game.

I’d be interested to know how medicals are completed for potential new signings. Whether it’s similar to football.

The pathway is a strange one, we seem to have a lot of good teenagers but struggle to get them through to the first team. Bowlers like Brooke and Garrett have been mentioned as playing elsewhere but they were not exactly challenging our first 11. At the same time we have two young batsmen playing regularly but have yet to have really defined their roles and it’s a wonder how long until they have their places questioned. We saw it with the comments Yates would get when he struggled, admittedly usually from a single poster.

Recruitment of the three white ball players is something I strongly disagree with. Good money spent on basically one competition, which as we saw last year can all be over with just one under par game. I would be interested to hear from someone at the club about the rationale behind that.

OK, we essentially released Olly Stone at the end of the 2022 season, yes he was injury prone (overall record suggests he played a little more than people remember, he was never like Norwell is now), but he didn't need to play every game to have a positive impact on the season.

Craig Miles in 2022 played 7 red ball games and took 11 wickets at an average of 63 (imagine the reaction if Brookes turned in figures that bad?!) and got given a 3 year contract.

We rewarded garbage and released quality.

Squad management has been poor for ages now.

Re. Recruitment. We've no margin for error here because we don't have a steady, sustainable pipeline of seamers coming through the pathway to back up the 1st team squad. The cupboard has never been so bare in that regard. Means that everytime we sign a bowler we need them to hit the ground running. An almost impossible expectation, recruitment is so tricky