Goodness me another drop

96

Watched him up until lunch, he was on 34. Looked absolutely sublime to be honest.

Troughton has been Head Coach for us before hasn't he? 2018-2020?

Think DoC may suit him this time around.

Doesn't expand too much. Sort of insinuates Larsen has jumped before he got pushed. Links Troughton to the job though acknowledges he currently works as batting coach at Surrey. Nothing mentioned about Robinson at all.

Interestingly in the Cricketer article about the Latham signing it mentions about the Performance Review that the state of the often lifeless pitches Edgbaston for 4day cricket will come under scrutiny too. Its not a dig at Barwell or his team but anybody with eyes can see that low and slow getting lower and slower is very much a theme for our home games. That square is dead. Looking at investing more in hybrid pitches, this will be a good thing.

Don't think much of his slip fielding going off this Test!

Don't know of its been covered elsewhere but I seem to have a memory of Latham keeping wicket a bit at one point? I could be mistaken though.

Looks a decent signing. Definitely got the experience, he's done the gig before at a few counties, I seem to remember him doing well at Durham.

Availability a huge plus, especially in this day and age. As Paul alluded to though I think he'll be an odd pick in t20 cricket. Great if he plays the One Day Cup however.

Excellent to have a cricketer with such vast experience around the place.

Wouldn't be keen on him doing the captaincy, not that hes ever struck me as being a bad captain, just let him bat.

As a Bears fan who lives in the Solihull area I'm extremely grateful for us having no trip to Southampton, absolute nightmare from here. Shame no Taunton in CC, I've been loads though personally. Lancashire away at Liverpool is a lovely one, looking forward to Hove, Scarborough will be a treat, cant wait for that. 3 games at Rugby School again is a shame though.

Scarborough!

Notts at home and Hants at home?

Reports are that he's batting 3.

Jacob has been by Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL auction.

Presumably this means he misses the first 2 months of the English domestic season.

Can't find any start times for these games?

The one player we didn't want to lose as he's gonna be so hard to replace. Outstanding, underrated gloveman who always made tough runs. We always had half a chance with him in the side.

Terrible, terrible news.

Every year we seem to lose somebody significant/important whether that be a player(s) or coach. Been happening for ages now. Just no continuity.

When can we expect these? Think we got them mid/late Nov last year for 2024.

Terrific bloke

Taz is training with the England Test squad whilst on holiday in Pakistan.

Apologies if this has already been covered but I notice Alex Davies made PCA Mens team of the year.

Bet that boiled some piss on here.

Ed Barnard was also included.

Dan Mousley and Hamza Shaikh gave been included in England Lions squad tour to South Africa next month. Training camp and one 4day match.

paulbear wrote:

Andy wrote:

Can't understand the overseas situation. Have we been massively unlucky? Maxwell was/is one of the worlds leading white ball cricketers, was so clearly the best available player to us at the time. Did we expect too much? Was he as bad as we remember? I'm not sure he was. Was fair to expect more though.

I dio
Re. Worrall. Hold on a sec, he played for Gloucestershire for 3 or 4 seasons so it's not like Surrey unearthed a gem out of nowhere. Only when he gained his British passport did Surrey pinch him. Good player though, clearly.

Jeets what a player, clearly. Crucially NZ schedule was quite light for a such a long period. We did lose him to international duty on a couple of occasions, 2012 he was gone for about 6 or 7 weeks as NZ toured India and 2017 he was part of NZ's Champions Trophy squad. He also turned NZ down on a couple of occasions so as not to jeopardise his Warwickshire contracts. He was a bit more highly rated by his country than you may think. And rightly so.

We've struggled with T20 overseas players for so long. Shoaib Malik in 2014 was good for us but even he missed Finals Day for the CPL (I think?). Even Jeets, as incredible as he was, used to get caned in that format in his 2 or 3 seasons with us.

I think the only way you can guarantee player availability (fitness permitting obviously) is to engage a domestic player from SA, Aus or NZ who is largely unheralded and not really on the radar of national team selection. Even then Cricket Australia are so difficult to work with, look at Kent and the Xavier Bartlett situation, all agreed for all formats, then on the eve of the season CA pulled him out and only let him play the Blast. Nightmare.

I didn't realise that Worral played for Gloucestershire but either way, Surrey still went for him despite him not being proven so the same example applies. Maxwell, if you consider his reputation, it is as a hard hitting and fast scoring batman who can bowl decent off-spin, well his off-spin was no better than decent and his batting was not a success from what we were probably expecting, 'The Big Show', he was not. I do not recall many games where Jeetan got caned and he did play a lot more than his "2 or 3 seasons". As for his fellow-countrymen, well if he was so highly rated, they would have played him a lot more than they did, not one performance did he get in the last Champions Trophy tournament that was played in the UK.

*meant his last 2 or 3 seasons with us in the Blast when he was going at 8 or 9 or 10 an over lost games. There was no bigger fan of Jeets than me I'm just highlighting how difficult it is for players to perform well across all formats. He turned down NZ many times to play for us, good luck finding that loyalty again.