Best of luck to him. He never particularly got on a run of form at any point; and seems a good decision for everyone.

It does suggest though with Briggs and Lintott in the hundred, that the likes of Bethell will get lots of opportunity in the RLODC, and even use it to give Lamb and Mousley a chance to improve their spin bowling in matches.

Who knows how this is going to play out. Doubt they’ve done much, if any, red ball practice since their last match.

The interesting choice will be with Sibley available, do they go to 7 batsmen, or stick with Burgess at 6 and take the extra bowler.

Can also assume Stokes will be available which makes things slightly more complicated. But a good win in this, and other results going their way could see the club practically qualified to the top group with a game to spare.

Was at the match today. That all came from poor bowling. It doesn’t excuse the batting, but apparently today was the 5th time that pitch has been used and it really showed.
They should never have scored more than 150. But poor bowling to Duckett and Hales, and a poor last over was the killer.
If you look at both innings the amount of players out through miss-hits, leading edges etc was really obvious. The ball just wasn’t coming on. You can go about chasing 7.5 an over very differently to 9 an over. The fact that even when they just tried to rebuild they were still struggling shows how tough it was to bat out there. Not 63 all out tough, but not 180 off 20 either.

Kelley is definitely a superior keeper to Benjamin.
Reading between the lines on the comments made, looking at the number of byes he’s conceded etc. The club clearly like Benjamin as a batsman, but there’s a lot of work needed to get him to be an acceptable back up keeper.
Especially when you consider he’d be stepping in for Burgess and the level of gloveman that he is.
It will be interesting for the rest of the season to see who does better with the bat in red ball, Benjamin or Kelley.

Beating them 4 times would be superb. They are probably the least likeable team in county cricket.
Can’t stand Mullaney, Fletcher or Moores.

Has Furrer played at all this year? Seen him running drinks and general 12th man duties for the firsts, but not a single ball bowled.

Assuming he has an injury of some sort.

Brookes signs for 3 years. The announcement also confirms that he is out for the rest of the year and will be having surgery on his quad/ligament/tendon injury.
Good and bad news in one go.

Interesting the article says it’s only for the rest of the year. I wonder if that’s a money saving exercise, and another deal to follow next year. Or if it’s a case of lets see if he can do it in red ball.

That went well.

I think this is the key one.
Worcestershire without Ali are not particularly threatening. I think they will lose more matches now. I’d expect us to beat them twice. I’d expect us to beat Northants too.
Notts will be tough, not so optimistic.
But if they win against Yorkshire today that should be 4 wins from the last 5. Getting to 17 points, which I don’t see Worcestershire or Lancs getting to.
Lose it and they’d probably need to win all of the last 4 to qualify.
And as we’ve seen this team is all about momentum. Get 1 win, they’ll go on a run. Seen it in both red and white ball this year. So this is the one for me, get some positive momentum and I think they’ll qualify.

What happened to Montgomery? Scores a load of runs on T20 finals day and now has disappeared.
Is he a student?

Think this is really good news. Contributing well with the bat. Been exceptional with the gloves.
If he keeps growing and performing like this he’ll have an excellent career.
Interesting Farbrace talks about how popular he is and his personality. He definitely seems a leader out there. Seen a few opposition batsmen not be particularly pleased with him, which is exactly what you want from a keeper. And definitely something the team can lack. Lots of talent in the squad, too many are a bit nice.

Bald_Reynard wrote:

I guess Phoenix will be looking for another player next month as well then. What's the situation getting replacements in the 100?

As far as I can tell it’s chaos and no one really knows. There’s a supplementary draft coming up. But I’m not sure if that’s just for extra players or for injury/withdrawal replacements too.

Some rather poor news to report. I played a round today with a friend of mine who works for a sports agency. He said there was talk going round county cricket last week that Brookes is out long term. The club are apparently planning that he won’t be fit for the T20’s, and it’s 50/50 as to whether it’s a season ender, but it all depends on what doctors say. Word on the grapevine is that it was misdiagnosed, he had discomfort after bowling before the Derbyshire match, had a scan later that week and it showed it is apparently a ligament issue and not muscular.
He had been considering his options and that’s why no contract announcement, even though one had been offered by the club. Expectation is now he’ll re-sign with Warwickshire as no one else will risk it with an injury of unknown severity.

If we could just for once get out of the powerplay without being 3 or 4 wickets down, we might actually pose a threat with the bat.
One of Pollock or Hose has to go or drop lower. They can’t keep both getting out after 2 overs.
It’s like they can’t comprehend that it’s much better to be 50 for 1 or 2, after 6, than 60 for 3 or 4.

Apparently Brookes was having a long, full speed bowl in the middle before the Derbyshire match.
Hopefully that was a fitness test of some sort and he’ll be available for Saturday.
Would love him back in the side, he was excellent in T20 last year, and without him or Stone in the side, we lack a true fast bowler, and the threat they pose.

With Lintott and Mousley out still, I’d definitely risk playing Bethell to get that second spin option. Briggs is excellent but without another spinner, teams don’t need to take risks against him, and they just play him out at 5/6 an over and then attack the more expensive seamers.

I don’t mind 1 player at the top trying to smash everything because when it works it’s great. But we have 2 in Hose and Pollock. Both of whom too often don’t come off, and we end up 10 or 15 for 2 after 2. Which like today can easily become 50-4, the powerplay is either wasted, or you’re on the back foot, which is the difference between making 160, 180 or even 200.

4 down in the powerplay just isn’t good enough.
Equally Bresnan and Norwell bowling in the powerplay were poor.
Briggs was excellent again, but we missed Lintott to bowl with him.
Thought it odd Rhodes didn’t bowl himself. Some slower balls and cutters might have done the job.

Couldn’t agree more they need to keep him.
My fear though is if he chooses to go elsewhere because he’s not playing. He hasn’t played at all, and he seems to not even be the next guy in. He’s a few players down the pecking order.
He was allowed to speak to other clubs from the start of this month.
They need to keep their young products and not have a reputation that academy players do better elsewhere.

I hope that puts an end to the nonsense of Brathwaite coming in ahead of Burgess.
He’s had one good innings of the flattest pitch they’ll play on all year.