Yeah Roach is back. Sudharsen is a strange signing, only played 8 first class matches in his career thus far, no international cricket.

Glad you acknowledge that we have indeed recruited heavily already.

People seem to think county cricket is like football in that you can just go out and sign 4 or 5 players and sort the team out, Cricket just doesn't work like that, Ashley Giles said this on numerous occasions in interviews across 2017 and 2018. The most successful county sides all have a strong nucleus of homegrown players (Essex, Somerset) and an excellent pipeline of talent from their academy and pathway. Surrey recruit well but they also consistently show a pathway to the first XI for homegrown talent and have had some excellent academy products in their 4day side.

It's far too simplistic to say recruitment is the be all and end all in cricket.

Warwickshire have been very active in recruiting from other counties for a good few years now and yet supporters seem to think the answer to us not winning knockout games is to recruit even more/harder. Take the 3 quarter final losses in a row in the Blast, the playing XI in each one of those games were all quite different each time, it's not like the same players have all failed every year. Compare the XI that lost away at Kent in 2021 with the XI that lost at home to Essex in 2023...two very different Bears teams. Maybe we have too big a turnover in players every other season due to recruitment?

One thing I will assert about our recruitment is that we have to do better at overseas players. However Directors of Cricket have my sympathy though as with the rise of franchise tournaments and a bloated international cricket calender its becoming harder to get a quality player to be available for county cricket for long periods. Look at next season with the T20 Blast, it will coincide with the T20 World Cup, all the best players will be tied up in that you'd think. It gets harder and harder to sign quality overseas players and when you do get a good one, like Maxwell, there is no guarantee they will perform.

I've seen people on here say things like '...we need a quality overseas middle order batter who can also captain in 4day cricket...'

Well yeah, every county wants that, but good luck finding one.

The Davies news caught my eye. Does this mean Hamza Shaikh will debut? Does Rhodes open? Does Barnard?!

That Dawson interview is a good one. He's bowling has improved a lot this season, he's a very canny operator who knows his game inside and out.

Farbrace made an approach for him in 2019 but he chose to stay put which is entirely fair.

GerryShedd wrote:

Before we sack the coach and half the playing squad, perhaps we should step back and realise that, so far this season, we have, in all competitions, won 22 games and lost just nine. We are fourth in Division One of the Championship and topped our groups in both the Blast and the One Day Cup.
That doesn't mean it's ok to lose at the quarter and semi-final stages but it does mean that the season has been far from a disaster.

Exactly this. We've improved loads and we're far more competitive than 2022. Some major overreacting going on in here. I'm not keen on Robinson either, I too have heard things, but he ain't in sack territory going off this season thus far.

Tail end runs have been a problem for us all season. In the County Championship even though we're better than last season we're still a little bit '6 down and all out quickly'.

Surrey's top order have been no better than ours this season, not much better anyway. However they can be 110-4 then 285-8 then 340 a/o. They do all the time whether it be Abbott, Joverton, Worrall or Lawes etc. We could never...

We do lack tail order runs. Remember 2011/12 when we might have Clarke, Woakes, Maddy, Barker and Jeets at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!

I always think with Bethell it's a case of one step forward one step back. He'll play a nice little innings illuminated with terrific strokes underlining his huge ability (like v Derbyshire) and you think he's cracked it then in the following games he'll be presented with a situation where he can really take charge and get a big score in a pressure situation (like v Sussex or today) and he ends up not doing it.

But he is very young and he won't get better at this by playing in the 2's or by not playing at all so you look for the year on year improvement. He's a better player than last season but right now he's very loose.

Tayls79 wrote:

Genuine question, I haven't seen any of today. But was this one of those quasi-autumnal games where the toss loser gets put in and they got shot out, chasing team win at a canter? I see Dawson got a load of wickets, but had the seamers put us on the backfoot already and he cleared up?

"Clutch" games are definitely a key issue. As well as the knock out white ball games we lost crucial CC games too where a win or a good draw would have seen us in a stronger position. I'm not sure it's totally a coaching issue, there's limited impact when the players are on the field. Without knowing if this was an autumn result we don't know for sure its a choke or not. Not sure if they're getting better at it or not.

While we're on Robinson, I can remember rumours saying he ruffled a few feathers with England women. But England women were much stronger at the end of his reign. This will be his third season completed so he can't blame predecessors. If we get, say, third in the CC, fourth in the one day then 8th in the Blast, is that removal territory?

Huge toss to win for Hampshire. Was very dull and dank at 11am with the ball swinging and nipping about off the pitch. Some of the dismissals look terrible in isolation and there was a fair amount beating the bat with some playing and missing and the odd delivery popping off a length from the Pavilion End. Tough pitch. Dawson was getting a decent amount of turn. Even Hain looked a bit iffy and a bit streaky at times. There was some dubious umpiring too but we did play some poor cricket no doubt, you simply cannot get run through for 93.

I still think we're having a decent season in comparison to last season.

BristolBear wrote:

I don’t think it’s a playing squad issue.
If you look around based on pure talent, we have a side that is up there. To me there’s 3 clear problems.
1) In the last couple of years a real mental block seems to have developed at crunch time. But we know that many of these players have performed in big moments before, and also so many different players across the 2 years and formats, so it’s not like it’s a personal issue.
It seems to be a collective thing that has emerged. Ironically the player who’s spent the least time around the squad on Norwell, had his major moment last year. And you just wonder if it’s something going on within the group as a whole.

2) Players seem to have regressed, not progressed or just not been playing. If you look at the last 2 years, Davies, Rhodes, Yates, Briggs, Norwell, Miles, Brookes, they’ve all stalled or regressed from where you’d expect them to be. You could argue Benjamin, Bethell and Ethan Brookes haven’t developed as expected either. So we’re not getting players performing to their potential.

3) We peak at the wrong time, it looks like we switch between formats really well on the surface. We started fast in both the T20 and ODC. But if you look at the championship results around that, just before the ODC a pretty poor draw against Lancs and an awful loss to Middlesex.
You look at the championship results around the start of T20 and it’s a match we managed to not get over the line against Notts and a bad loss to Essex.
So you wonder if too much thought is given to the upcoming format. We peak early in that format, the championship results drop off, and then because we’ve peaked early by the time it’s crunch time we’re on the downslope and always seem to lose.

To me all three of those problems are coaching issues. And I know I’m not the only one who’s heard the rumblings from behind the scenes about Robinson, his personality and how he seems to not be the most popular with the squad.

Point 3 is a decent shout and something I hadn't considered.

Cant recall Surrey having an exceptional amount of white ball success and i think we've won the County Championship twice since Notts last won it. Think Essex have probably had more recent success than both to be fair.

We got Barnard in, other counties were interested. Rushworth got his contract at Durham torn up to come here. Moeen came here, other counties were interested. A very attractive offer got put Saqib Mahmoods way, he chose to stay at Lancs, that ain't on us. All within the past 12 months. We got Alex Davies in the season prior, other counties were in for him.

We recruit heavily in comparison to most other counties and we're still losing cup games so what is it?

We certainly don't have a predominantly "homegrown" squad.

The likes of Pennington, Haynes and Tongue (he'll be on the treatment table a lot, in fact he is right now) being Bears players wouldnt have changed today's result.

KingofSpain wrote:

mad wrote:

Any more making the short trip over from Warwicks?

Henry Brookes can go with his brother. He might fare better there under the guidance of Alan Richardson.

Pretty sure he's still under contract...

KingofSpain wrote:

meashambear wrote:

ExiledBrummie wrote:

Not just the management etc, I do wonder if some of our players are just not as good as we think they are. For example, Hain aside would you ever trust any of our batters in a tough situation? We need better quality/attitude.

Yes, I agree but that too comes down to the management as it is them that recruit & hand out the contracts. Cricket has a much smaller pool of players and clubs than football but if the coach & DOF (and therefore should know the players characters well enough)at one of the biggest clubs in the country were constantly getting hammered when in the knock out stages of competitions they would be out on their backsides. This is not good enough for Warwickshire.

Bears fans deserve better. We are a test match ground county and are always outbid on the recruitment front by the likes of Notts and Surrey.

And I bet we've had more success than both in the past 10 years. How do you know we get "outbid" for the players those counties recruit? Do we really want to be poachers like Notts?

Tough pitch and some rancid umpiring but goodness me some poor cricket has been played here.

Nightmare, total nightmare in so many different ways. Some people will be here for the first time today and they witness this!

Terrible from Yates

Hain IN. Davies OUT (back)

No Mousley, no Benjamin as Robbo wants to stick, generally, with the players who got us this far.

Had to scroll back pretty far to find my poachers comment...and had to think back VERY far to some of those signings you mention some of them signed over 10 years ago, some almost 15 years ago!

Assuming the guys from the other comp are available and the club intend to use them (assuming Woakes is ruled out by ECB and Moeen in T20 squad) are we looking at a line up of

Yates
Barnard
Rhodes
Hain
Mousley
Burgess
E Brookes
Lintott
H Brookes
Briggs
OHD

?

Really hope Worcestershire can win this. I feel like Hampshire have our number in white ball cricket.

Trott played.

BristolBear wrote:

Last year there was a rule that an overseas player had to have played in the group stages to play in the knock out rounds. They got rid of that this year.

Even though it could be a big advantage for us to have the likes of Hain, Mousley and Woakes back.
I do feel like it’s wrong. Players who were part of the hundred should had to have played in the group stages or played a minimum number of group stage games to come back.
Seems unjust and unfair otherwise.
Depending on the result in the Hundred eliminator, the likes of Hampshire could get Vince, Dawson, Howell, Whiteley, Wood, Crane, Weatherly and Wheal back for the quarter, semi and final. Thats a brand new team. Which is obviously ridiculous.

I didn't know that. Until this year players couldn't be released from the other comp to play the ODC so that makes no sense?