I am concerned about this. he seems to indicate that "Senior Management" and "the Board" are free to take their own view and will do so on the proposed changes.

This seems to indicate a step change from being a members' club.

There is the sop of the Members' Committee but I know in the past that several people were told at interviews they couldn't join it if they opposed Club policies.

I appreciate the Club did get its constitutional changes through a couple of years ago (including the extremely high bar of 250 signatures for an SGM which is higher than most clubs) but we are still a Members Club. It seems incredible that the Board and Senior Management feel they are completely unaccountable and can decide what they like.

Ultimately i think - like Lancashire - we need an SGM to hold the Chairman and Board to account and remind them who actually owns the Club!

So what are you going to do Bosworth Bear? Have you printed the letter produced by Lancs Action Group? Are you going to ask members to sign today?

I signed it on Sunday, I am in contact with Alan, I can't attend Edgbaston this week due to work but I've posted the link on here.

what are you doing?

I hope we won't be passive this time.

I’ve got 15 signatures at the game today.

Well done Malc, it'll be a great shame if some don't want to give their signatures. Watching a pitiful amount of CC cricket will mean that when England fail to produce Test players and lose Test matches/series, those who didn't want to sign can hardly call themselves 'Cricket fans' and should hang their heads in shame.

I just hope that the outcome is that the counties will run the ECB rather than the other way around. Maybe I’m naive, but I think the powers that be are a little surprised at the depth of feeling. If Richard Thomson can’t stop the juggernaut initiated by Graves, Harrison and Strauss, I don’t know who can.

Several around collecting them today. Ought to be pretty close to 200 now plus the ones that'll be posted to the club.

Need to smash past 250 in case of any duplicates they'll check for. Should be do-able by the time of the Somerset championship game Day 1 by lunchtime when that forum starts.

I wonder if the club will alter it's posture like Lancs were forced to. Notts members have over 400 signed up to force the issue there. Warks won't want to be left the only ones not respecting member interests although that wouldn't surprise me much the way membership no's have fallen here since Dennis Amiss used to walk round chatting to the members engaging with them canvassing opinion. Nothing like that these days just a faux forum when they have something they've been hiding to finally reveal

mad - I said exactly the same thing to Alan Higham about Dennis's walks around the ground and the members who used to love his friendly persona. It did feel like a 'Club' then who cared about it's members and he was Mr Warwickshire through and through but it has all got so corporate now with too many rules and regulations regarding just about everything from not being able to bring beer in at some games to not actually being able to bring cans of any sort in (I was stopped from bringing in a can of Pepsi and tried to explain that as a diabetic, it's sugar content was higher than other drinks and more likely to up my sugar levels if it should go low. I was told that I could buy one if necessary and explained that a wait in the queue could involve me going into a coma before I got served) and this is the way our game has been taken away from us now and become a corporate exercise in making money like everything else from prices for Test tickets to massively overpriced food. The relaxation you get at a CC game is so different from other forms of the game. The whole thing is more 'us & them' than ever it was.

Still concerned that Board aren’t accountable to members and neither are senior management team.

Who do they think they act on behalf of?

It also is wrong that we require 250 signatures for an SGM when Lancashire with a larger membership require only 100.

The members committee is clearly a sham.

So the constitutional changes have marginalised the membership and reduced the incentive to join.

I really hope we can send a message on this one or the future is bleak.

Possibly my naivity but I have slightly more confidence in the committee acting in members interests

What needs to happen is Warwickshire reject the Strauss proposals and lead calls for a proper two-year consultation timeline starting now

This would necessitate no change for season 2023 and 2024

By close of season 2023 a decision needs to be reached as nobody is satisfied with the schedule - not members with the lack of summer / weekend cricket and not players with the uncertainty

Any changes can then be instigated in time for the start of the 2025 season - this would be the right and proper timescale for anything like this not just blindly following the mood music or panicking because of IPL etc...

At least that way there will have been the necessary time and emphasis on consultation and time for the counties to properly prepare sort contracts out etc... Instead of something cack handed being rushed through

Forgive my ignorance, but two questions: 1) Have the Strauss recommendations been published yet? Not the version that was leaked, intentionally in my view, for last minute feedback at the weekend. 2) Are they intended for implementation at the start of 2023 season? Means the conclusion of this seasons CC is up in the air if they are.

Tayls79 wrote:

Forgive my ignorance, but two questions: 1) Have the Strauss recommendations been published yet? Not the version that was leaked, intentionally in my view, for last minute feedback at the weekend. 2) Are they intended for implementation at the start of 2023 season? Means the conclusion of this seasons CC is up in the air if they are.

The Strauss report is due out in mid-September. I'm not sure when any recommendations would be implemented and whether everything would happen at the same time or it would be phased.

I looked back at the interview I did four years ago with the then Chairman Norman Gascoigne about the proposed changes in the Club rules. I asked him:
“What powers will members still have? Let’s suppose, entirely hypothetically, that the ECB proposed to scrap the County Championship and replace it with a 10 overs a side competition. The members would for sure be up in arms in opposition to this; but what if the word from Edgbaston was that the Club would support the proposals? What could the Members do now (under the existing Club rules) to change the Club’s line; and what will they be able to do if the governance changes go through?”

“There won’t really be any difference,” replied Norman. “In both situations, the higher of 250 members or 5% of the club membership would be needed in order for a Special General Meeting to be convened. At the meeting a proposal could be put forward for a vote of no confidence. Or a resolution could be raised for the Board to vote against the ECB proposals. If the resolution was passed, the Board would be bound by it.”

Maybe my hypothetical question wasn't so far off the mark.

It was spot on Terry but maybe reveals why they set such a high bar in terms of signatures needed to call an SGM.

Also in this case an SGM cannot be called in time to bind the Chairman to vote on behalf of members. So the only other option is no confidence after the event.

Cain's reply worries me the most as it seems to indicate that both the Board and Senior Management Team are not accountable to Members and make their own minds up. If this is the case who are they accountable to?

Anyone who hasn't yet signed the SGM forms will surely be there to sign it on the way into the forum on September 12th. The club must realise by the time the meeting starts we'll have around 350-400 signatures by then

Article by Tanya Aldred here:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/aug/24/lancashires-awkward-squad-ready-to-battle-for-county-crickets-future

What many supporters are desperate for is a season that has a friendly, familiar rhythm and doesn’t change from year to year with competitions ripped up here and inserted there. It was only in 2017 that the number of Championship games fell from 16 to 14, and there has been recent tinkering with the size of the divisions and the number of teams promoted and relegated. The B&H Cup died in 2002, T20 began in 2003, the 40-over competition played its last in 2013, replaced by the Royal London Cup, which now runs in the shadow of the Hundred, which was born in 2021

Hallelujah

Thanks for the clarity on the timing of the Strauss recommendations Gerry. I can't source it because only found it through random googling. But I saw Strauss on record saying he wanted it implemented for 2023. Very tight to get that done if the recommendation is being published in September. The commentary for yesterday's game speculated on whether Warks target for the last three CC games is avoiding relegation from the 2022 champo or being in the top six for whatever comes in 2023 with a rumour of three divisions of six.

mad is right about getting a familiarity to the whole of the county season and if we had 10 CC games, 14 T20 and 8 Royal London, that's just a minimum of 62 days. Will we still be expected to pay the same sort of money for our membership compared to getting about 90+ days when the fixture list wasn't messed about with. I get the feeling that we will still get little cricket at weekends and little of it because CC games will start on a Sunday anyway and will probably do so like they did at the start of one season before the T20 which was due to start 10 weeks later. If Strauss get his way with 10 CC games you can bet the fixture list will still look a mess and offer members nothing that they want. The whole of the ECB ethos seems to be "Look at Test matches, they are full..", yes with 1000's of people who don't watch county cricket but turn up for the glam/glory games but still call themselves cricket fans. If they did get a fixture list that pleased most members of counties, I get the feeling that they would always want to still tamper with it and try and wear us all down.

This weeks grumbler is required reading everybody. A rallying cry if you will...

https://countycricket.substack.com/p/no-64-aug-24-the-grumblers-county

Especially concur with the following;

The Campaign to Save County Cricket
The ECB have lost sight of county cricket's loyal support (Cricketer)

Paul Edwards’ pieces always have a special poignancy.

In this one, he laments the deep division in the game at the moment. As do I, but at the same time, it is very galling that those who have treated the county game with such disrespect, and show no signs of stopping until it is stone dead, are now calling for calm.

We remember the original announcement, then the silence, the confusion, then the string of confused announcements, the people saying 'it's not for us' then the stories of a boardroom 'ambush' and NDAs. Then, of course, the realisation this year that we were right to be so fearful.

But, alas, such pieces, don't matter. The self-proclaimed ‘disruptors’ justify their carnage as a 'cost of business'. They sell the sizzle and then, like Teflon Tom Harrison, are out the door and banking their bonus before the price is truly paid.

It's not just cricket, it's business and, shamefully, it’s Britain.

We used to be better than this.