Exiled Bear
Administrator
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?!
Highveld wrote:
To, attempt to, bring this thread back onto the topic.
Possible side for Thursday, including changes I think are needed.
Rhodes, Mousley, Kai Smith, Barnard (C), Hain, Burgess(wk), Benjamin, Briggs, Booth, OHD, A.N. Other(Woakes if available)
The club needs to get 5 points to ensure Division 1 survival. The best chance of achieving that is to allow a new captain a clean slate without the negative influence that having a disposed formaer captain could create.
Yes, let’s drop our top run scorer and bring in someone that scored 114 runs in 13 innings in the T20 and that averages 24.5 in first class cricket, that should do it 😂
I thought you meant that Davies was off the field when it happened…
Players leave the field for a variety of reasons throughout a championship match. It’s hardly unusual.
Speculation is one thing but the whole “I know something that no one else does” thing is very tiresome. Either reveal your source or keep these rumours (which they will remain until they can be backed up with evidence) to yourself
The_Lickey_Banker wrote:
2 match loan from Leicestershire, to cover injuries (Booths & Simmons) and departures (Rae). Apparently, you can only take loans from a different Division and players who have played less than 2 CC matches
https://www.leicestershireccc.co.uk/news/walker-joins-warwickshire-on-loan-until-end-of-season
I understand the reasons for that rule but it seems pretty harsh at this point in the season when many more players will have played at least two games!
GerryShedd wrote:
Gloucestershire were very worthy winners. They peaked at the right time, winning their last five matches in the competition.
Reminds me of the year we won it.
With the emergence of Archie Vaughan, Somerset now have three spinners (though I suppose Vaughan is more of a batsman). I wonder if one of them could be persuaded to move?
Yes our fans do like a moan, that’s for sure! Most comments levelled at the management/coaching are fair I think but in the championship I think we’ve just been one strike bowler away from being towards the top in my opinion. It’s the lack of being able to take 20 wickets that’s cost us, turn a couple of our 7 draws into wins and it makes a huge difference. Rushworth being injured certainly harmed us a lot and yes, this goes back to the management relying on an ageing seam attack.
Also worth mentioning that Alex Davies passed 1000 championship runs for the season and is only the second player to do so in Division 1. He's had a lot of stick since joining us but has definitely been a lot more consistent this season.
I’ve generally been one of the few to defend Robinson over the last couple of years but unfortunately I think time has run out. As others have said, to concentrate so much on this competition and not even make it to finals day just isn’t good enough. On paper our side is good but once again we just choked. Don’t think the captaincy is the issue though as others have suggested, we haven’t lost many under Davies’ watch.
Have to say that I think we were a bit screwed by the scheduling this year, with such a long break since the last game and going into this one cold - it was the same for Gloucestershire but I feel like the underdog is always favoured in this scenario.
That was a truly awful batting performance. I don’t think Gloucestershire earnt any of their wickets, we just gave them away time and time again.