GerryShedd wrote:

Anyway, my guess is that there will be some play from mid afternoon onwards, just time for OH-D to complete that maiden first-class half century that he covets.

He was denied by the rain!

And right on cue…!

There’s another band of heavy rain not too far away, I think we only need to survive another half an hour or so.

Think we were quite unlucky in that last hour or so

With OHD, Woakes, Hasan Ali, Rushworth, Latham and Bethell all to potentially come in, I think we’re in a good spot.

Have cricinfo stopped doing their ball-by-ball scorecards?

We have rotten luck when it comes to overseas players

We established at the end of last season that our opening partnership is actually statistically one of the best of any county

BosworthBear wrote:

I was looking at a picture of the ground today. I bet there’s some in those new flats which were built and has a view of the ground who must be gutted a hotel will now block their view.

Surely none of the people who bought them expected to keep that view for long? The club has been planning to redevelop that side of the ground for a while.

It sounds like his contract this time around has some clauses in it related to availability, so if he gets injured again it shouldn’t cost the club.

I think it’s a good signing if he’s available, I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s on the slide.

Really hope it goes well for him. But picking him to bat at 3 when he hasn’t made a century in professional cricket and has never batted higher than 4 in first class cricket is quite a bold move.

Personally I prefer us being listed as just “Bears” rather than “Birmingham Bears”, but I would obviously prefer “Warwickshire” to either of those!

I’m not sure what the point of selecting Mousley was just for him to bat at 7 and not bowl…

Presumably it means that’s another player that we’ll see very little of next season.

Davies was also Player’s Player of the season, which suggests that he isn’t disliked among the squad.

Spare a thought for Highveld, who will now have to find a new favourite.

BristolBear wrote:

On the opening stands.
I’ve just gone back through the scores:

0,1,6,5,26,62,5,52,106,19,29,48,15,38,3,21,18, 59,10,56,116,343,37.

That’s an average of just over 46.
Take out the ridiculous situation of the 343 stand with the kookaburra in those silly early season games, that average goes to 33.
2 (+1) hundred stands, 4 fifty stands, 6 single figure stands. 3 of those big stands are with those kookaburra early season matches. With a dukes the average is far lower.
The issue in my mind is the lack of consistency, both players run very hot and cold, having looked through the numbers too often they’re out very close together so those scores are often as much for 2 as they are for 1. So it’s always worse than just 1 wicket, and we’re often left with 2 brand new batsman facing a relatively new ball and fresh bowlers.

I get the point about consistency, but the fact is that our stats still compare very favourably with all the other first division counties (with the exception of Surrey). Here's a breakdown of a few more stats:

100 partnerships:

3 - Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire
2 - Surrey
1 - Kent, Durham, Essex, Somerset
0 - Lancashire, Worcestershire, Hampshire

50 partnerships:

6 - Surrey
4 - Warwickshire, Kent, Durham, Essex
3 - Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire
2 - Lancashire, Somerset
1 - Hampshire

Single figure partnerships:

4 - Surrey
5 - Essex, Nottinghamshire
6 - Warwickshire
8 - Worcestershire, Durham
10 - Hampshire
11 - Kent, Lancashire
15 - Somerset

The lack of century opening partnerships across the division was really surprisingly low for me. Perhaps what we're seeing here is that opening the batting is quite difficult, especially when the season is played largely in April, May and September? I also didn't realise that Hampshire's opening partnership was so bad!

Highveld wrote:

Exiled Bear has not provided the source for his figures, which reduces their value. The figures I have quoted are from cricinfo, for the inning by innings analysis, and from Microsofts Copilot AI search engibe for the figures for all 9 counties, which are taken from cricinfo.

The fact that can not be avoided is that the two main openers both get dismissed for less than 20 almost 50% of the time.

Great to see Sam Hain complete his 100, and having a good partnership with Ed Barnard.

I got the stats by going through every scorecard for each team this season and extracting their opening partnerships and calculating the averages.

I don’t know where Microsoft Copilot is getting its data from because it’s quite different to the actual, correct, data if you look through the scorecards. Generative AI models are known to make things up so maybe that’s what’s happening here.

As Andy said, the commitment to this narrative is quite impressive, particularly when the evidence shows that the opposite is actually true.

Highveld wrote:

Our average opening partnership is one of the lowest in Division one, so improvement is needed.

It must be soul destroying for the middle order knowing they are going to be batting in the first few overs, almost, every innings.

I didn't think I could let this statement pass without a bit of evidence-checking, and the results are quite interesting...

Here are the actual average opening partnerships, in order, for all teams in Division 1:

Surrey: 53.7
Warwickshire: 46.7
Nottinghamshire: 40.3
Durham: 33.0
Essex: 28.7
Kent: 28.3
Worcestershire: 22.9
Lancashire: 19.2
Somerset: 19.0
Hampshire: 15.9

So, it turns out that we actually have the second best opening partnership in Division 1!

The five points we need to guarantee survival assumes that Lancashire get maximum points from their game. I think the chances of them getting maximum batting points in late September are pretty slim, so even if we only get the three bowling points (which should be the case), that would leave them needing to get 400 in their first innings. Surely we are safe?!