Yes just heard Charlesworth compared to Gower.
Pull the other one 😂

Is it a coaches choice to have Benjamin keeping or is Burgess’ finger still causing issues?

I think Surrey in this competition are an example of youth thrown to the wolves. The entire bowling lineup is kids. No senior player to rely on, the same way our bowlers have OHD or Lintott, or the batted have Barnard and Burgess. So they’re relied upon instantly and in the highest pressure moments, with no protection.
Whereas the likes of Shaikh, Smith, Ali, can be shielded somewhat.
It does seem to be a choice too, they didn’t pick Virdi or Matt Dunn in the last couple of matches.

Sibleys innings really goes to show that in 50 over cricket, if you have someone to bat around, who stays near 100 strike rate, you always stand a chance.
He was let down by the likes of Foakes, Steel, Burns who didn’t deliver.
We’ve seen Barnard do that for us previously. Burgess did it for Benjamin today.
But as someone mentioned earlier, it does require an ability to manipulate the field and pick up 1’s and 2’s without getting bogged down.

Serious money being spent in Durham then.

Interesting how the Cricketer act more coy (or simply don’t know where Gay is going), but CricInfo just come out and say it.

According to reports the club are in a tussle with Durham to acquire Emiliano Gay’s signature.
Seen as a replacement for Rhodes leaving.
He’s announced he’s leaving Northants, but similarly to Rhodes, not where he’s going.

Their abilities are starting to be recognised beyond Warwickshire fans and dedicated county cricket journalists.

Let’s just hope they get handled properly, I’m also wondering what this means for their red ball careers.
Mousley has already started travelling off to franchise tournaments. He looks like he’d be very happy to be white ball only, but Bethell shows a lot of promise in red ball and I’d hate to see him pigeonholed too early.

Dan and Jacob have been superb.
Not sure the best thing for their long term success is to throw them into a set up in turmoil, underperforming, with no coach, against the world champions and biggest rivals.

Get a coach in, let him assess the current squad, retire a few players, start afresh against the West Indies in October.

Just not worth the risk. I’d hate to see such good players, and great lads, have their confidence knocked and get an unfair reputation early if it went wrong because it wasn’t planned out and thought through properly.

Just had a look at the Surrey team that played today.
A very out of balance team.
Strong batting, full of names, 3 England capped players in Sibley, Burns and Foakes, plus first team regulars Steel and Patel. Not all renowned at white ball, but players you’d expect to be more than good enough for the mixed bowling you can get in this competition.
But their bowling is almost entirely kids and part timers.
I wonder if they’ll be allowed any players back for Friday.

It’s Durham is it. I just assumed Yorkshire.

Durham surprises me, wonder where he fits in there, wouldn’t be guaranteed a place in the XI unless someone leaves.
Lees
Jones
Borthwick
Bedingham
Robinson

Is a strong top 5.

For me, and my point was more about reliability and consistency, Yates is very feast or famine. You’re never quite sure what you’re going to get. Which is the reliability bit, when he comes off he’s superb, but there’s often little rhyme or reason to when he’ll come off.
Perhaps form was the wrong word to use, because actually the way he scores his runs, and this might be to do with opening, in the past he has tended to get a huge score, then not much else for a while.
He doesn’t often get those battling 20’s and 30’s in red ball.
Similarly in white ball, often it’s single figures or 40+, there’s little in between.

In his last 10 matches, he’s had 11 innings. Out 10 times. Exactly 230 runs scored, averaging 23. So whilst a lot of those are t20, it does support the point that it’s feast or famine as he’s had 4 innings where he’s achieved a notable score for that format, but in the other 7 it’s 3 ducks, 2, 4, 7 and 15.

And perhaps the broken nature of his appearances is why this year it seems worse, because there are bigger gaps caused by injury and illness.

But I thought I would give an explanation of where I was coming from in terms of viewing Yates’ reliability, and how perhaps the 5 senior batters in the ODC aren’t as reliable or consistent a line up as perhaps one might think.

Excellent work by Rhodes and Smith to break the back of that.

That we struggled doesn’t surprise me. We were due one like that. We in theory have 5 senior batters, but you can’t expect Barnard and Burgess to score runs every time.
So who is there who should be able to be relied upon, well you’ve got Rhodes who did the job today.
But then Benjamin is so out of form, he can’t be relied upon and I’d rather have Theo Wylie.
But also, when was the last time Yates scored any proper runs? Seems to have been out of form for a while now.

Shouldn’t be relying on the likes of Shaikh and Smith. They shouldn’t have that pressure on them.

Lose 2 early wickets in Barnard and Wylie.

Hopefully this low total, gives Shaikh an opportunity to get himself in and play his own game without worrying about the run rate.

The Barnard & Burgess partnership is a very strong 1 for us. Seen it a few times in the championship, now in the 50 over.
If only we could get to see it in T20.

Tayls79 wrote:

Best outcome from the evening possible for Warwickshire. If we had to play Essex I'm convinced they would lose to them.

Interesting to note Lancs now have to travel after losing to Northants and Durham snuck in, so little harsh for Leics.

I was interested to see those proposed XIs on the Northants feed. Agree with the ones without OHD and Burgess in them. The former I don't think is a T20 player anymore, too predictable, and Burgess just hasn't played T20 for so long now I don't think he could make an instant impact. Which he would need to do in a quarter final.

I think the issue of coming in cold and needing to make an instant impact is sort of irrelevant because of the huge break. The quarter finals aren’t until the first week of September.
There’s 2 rounds of championship cricket between the end of the Hundred and 1 day cup, and the quarter finals.
Everyone comes in cold. That’s why the quarters will be a lot more of a lottery, it’s not just the best side, it’s the side who gets back into T20 rhythm the quickest.
But specifically on Burgess, I just look at him as a player, compare him to Benjamin and I cannot for the life of me understand why you’d pick Benjamin over Burgess. He can’t do any worse, the likelihood is that he’ll do better. He played T20 last season for Sussex. Outperformed all our players except Hain and Yates. For whatever reason Robinson just does not want him, it’s bizarre.

Man for man we’re definitely stronger.
But De Lange is a top bowler when on form.
They’ve also got a couple of very dangerous batsmen who can score heavily.

If we play our best team, and if our players play to their ability, I’d be confident of beating Gloucs.

Should be a good atmosphere too, Bristol isn’t far down the M5, the top of Gloucestershire is no more than an hour away. So expect they’ll bring some fans.

He definitely opened for Worcestershire.
I remember him hitting a tonne in a quarter final against Sussex I think it was.

This is the Moeen we thought we were getting. Where’s he been all this time?

Andy wrote:

So you acknowledge that we've not been reliant on just 1 or 2 players then?

You say it's rare for any side to be putting out their strongest XI at this point of the season, indeed, and we're still topping our group looking at another 1/4 final.

We've not done badly thus far.

The meltdowns on here after we lose are incredible sometimes.

Reliant on 1 or 2 with bat and ball. So 2 in each, 3 or 4 all together was what I was going for.
And perhaps it was an exaggeration but it’s not far wrong either. Far closer than ‘everyone is contributing’.

Maybe my standards are higher than yours. You might be happy with 3 years of quarter final losses. If so you’ve had a great 3 years.
But we’ve spent a significant amount of money on this T20 squad, recruited a lot of T20 only players. Recruited so heavily in favour of t20 to the point that’s it’s clearly damaged the championship side. So the frame of reference for success isn’t one match or getting through the group. This side was built and targeted at winning the entire thing. Probably more so than any other side.
And yet, the mistakes of years past are currently being replayed again.
Being outplayed man on man, anyone can live with. But currently they’re making selection and tactical decisions that are hurting this side.
All I want is to give themselves the best chance to win when they walk out on that field. And currently they’re not.
And as I said, I’m not looking at this through the lens of 1 match, or the group stage. I’m looking at this through the lens of success is winning the competition. The amount of resource and effort that’s gone into this team, at the detriment of other areas, making the final is the minimum now. And currently we’re heading straight for another repeat of years gone by.
Carried by key players. Obvious weaknesses for all to see. Those weaknesses aren’t addressed or even acknowledged, and then they get exposed when playing a top side.

So my apologies that my standards, or was it meltdown, are beyond belief. But the club set this direction of travel, they’ve made the decision that this is the priority at the detriment of the championship side, and so they should be held to that. It’s much bigger than 1 game.

Andy wrote:

BristolBear wrote:

Highveld wrote:

Excellent from Sam, and Jacob, again, hower the top 3 failed again, and too many runs were conceded .

Too many players are allowed to underperform every game with no consequences.

It’s the same in every format.
We reward mediocrity. We’ve gone so far beyond showing faith in players.
What are the standards?
This is the issue we’ve had in previous years. Heavily reliant on 1 or 2 players who carry the batting and bowling. But remain obviously weak in certain areas, and these aren’t addressed. Then we expect that to be ok when we play the very best teams.

Disagree with this to a point, we've got 3 batters in Hain, Bethell and Mousley (I'm glad we did keep faith with the latter two) who are giving us good runs in most games and with regards to the bowling our spinners, as a unit, get the job done almost every time.

Who, Benjamin aside perhaps, shouldn't be in the side? Keep in mind the likes of Miles and probably Foulkes wouldn't be in the side if others were fit. They are just injury fill ins.

Benjamin, Davies, Yates and Moeen haven’t been good enough with the bat.
You can say Foulkes and Miles wouldn’t be playing. But we chose to sign Foulkes over playing Booth or OHD. And Miles has played plenty of this format in the last few years. Plus everyone has injuries. Rare for any side these days to put out their first choice XI every match.
Garton is underperforming, especially when you consider this is the only format he plays for us.
Briggs and Lintott have been good. Gleeson was good before injury (another 1 format wonder). Mousley has been good with the ball too.
So you walk out each match, trusting only half the team. That works fine in the group stages as we’ve seen plenty of times before. Because more than half the games we play are against weaker teams, who have even less reliable players than we do.
But against the top teams in the QF, you need the depth because you need more than 1 or 2 players to come off in each discipline.