We really need to start winning the toss. I swear we lose it every time.

I liked Hassan Ali’s celebrations. Shows that he cares, I think.

Top of the league! I'm not sure when we last scored maximum batting bonus points (or registered a maximum points win for that matter) before this game but it feels like it must be years ago. Funny that we do it the year that they make batting points harder to get!

I think a result is still possible, but it will involve making Kent follow on

white-lightning wrote:

To me, the season starts far too early in April.

Agreed, although often we seem to have nice weather in April (though never warm!)

GerryShedd wrote:

With fewer pints for a draw this year

Did I miss this rule change? I suppose it makes sense to cut down the players’ alcohol intake

Highveld wrote:

Pleased to see Yates has done his job and got runs.
However as one swallow does not make a summer, on good innings does not erase the memory of the consitant failures last season.

Delighted to see that Sam Hain has got another good score.

That almost sounds like praise for Yates…

Refreshing to see us score at a decent rate both today and against Somerset. Last season we would so often plod along at 2 an over. Decent chance of maximum batting points in this one now.

And also encouraging that both of our openers already have centuries this season.

Just tuned in to the live stream for the first time. Nice to see that the score banner is much improved on last season, good stuff from the club.

Good to see all the new signings chipping in so far.

Presumably Rhodes had a substantial say in who was going to be vice captain? In which case we can probably assume that he approves.

This summer's Ashes series is looking like it should be a good one.

Meanwhile, India continue to serve up horrible turning pitches, which is definitely not in the best interests of Test cricket. At least this one was rated "poor"...

GerryShedd wrote:

I agree with Andy that it's ok to hail this as a good signing, though if he under-performs, we will have egg on our faces.
As for Stirling, I won't mention who said that he would be a good signing because I don't want to embarrass Exiled Bear.

To be fair, I don’t think I was the only one that thought he was a good signing after he played his first match for us!!

Agreed, really happy with this one.

kevandmac wrote:

Thank you EB.
Just a thought but is it easy enough to build a like button for posts? I ofter find myself wanting to agree with people but have no further comments to add.

This is definitely something that I'd like to add, and there's a plugin for it, but I had problems getting it to work last time I tried. I'll try again at some point though

Apologies for the downtime over the last few days - the server on which the forum runs crashed and some of the files got corrupted, so I've had to restore some from a backup that I had. I don't think we've lost any posts though. I still need to fix one or two things behind the scenes, so the forum should be considered at risk of further (hopefully short) downtime over the next week or so.

If you notice that something is broken, please let me know.

At least it didn't happen during the cricket season!!

Thanks for this. I thought it seemed like a good set of accounts but was waiting for your analysis to confirm it!

A few rule changes for the new season:

• Batting bonus points will now be scored at 250, 300, 350, 400 and 450 in the first 110 overs (no change to bowling points)

• A draw will go back to being worth 5 points rather than 8

• A kookaburra ball will be used in two rounds of matches

I think changing the points for a draw makes sense. I don’t think we’ll benefit much from the batting points change if previous seasons are anything to go by!!

Some of you may have noticed that when using the "Quote this post" button underneath a post a lot of undesired, unintelligible text appeared in the quick reply box at the bottom of the topic, instead of the text of the post that you actually wanted to reply to. I've now fixed this, so you can use the "Quote this post" button in addition to the "Full reply" button when quoting someone's post (you will need to add an extra empty line after the quoted post, though). Enjoy!

More reciprocal arrangements announced, including some in Australia!

https://edgbaston.com/news/extended-reciprocal-membership-arrangements-announced-for-2023/