Northwalesbear wrote:

Yates, Mousley, Bethell, Webster, Barnard, Woakes, Barker, Thompson, Booth , Bamber.

not far off an all rounder XI

Alex Davies says "Can I have a game, please?"

"Woakes, 36, has signed a new two-year deal to play across all three formats in both red and white ball — a commitment that will take him beyond 20 years of playing cricket for Warwickshire."

When I was there for the Cricket Society meeting two weeks ago it wasn’t exactly a hive of activity but there was certainly work going on.

Apparently, Jonathan Trott will not renew his contract with Afghanistan when it runs out in March next year. It seems that a new contract would require him to live in Afghanistan, which he is not willing to do. I was surprised to read that, although he has coached the team successfully for three years, he has never actually set foot in the country. I was forgetting that Afghanistan haven't played a proper "home" match since 2017.

George Dobell reports in The Cricketer that there is unlikely to be another domestic review until 2029, according to the chair of the Professional Game Committee (PGC) and Warwickshire Chair Mark McCafferty. Instead, the PGC will focus on reviewing playing conditions in county cricket, with changes likely around the type of balls used, the allocation of bonus points in the County Championship and, perhaps, the way in which pitches are judged.
So the current 14 game Championship stays in place.

Regarding the Kookaburra versus the Dukes balls, the statistics, apparently, are:
Where matches with a Duke’s ball have averaged 980 runs, the figure with the Kookaburra is 1128. Duke’s matches have yielded 30.27 wickets against 27.72 with Kookaburra. These figures mean that the average runs per wicket are respectively 32.37 and 40.71.
On another but related topic, I am one of those who goes on about the light workloads of current cricketers (bowlers in particular) compared with those of earlier eras. However, I was interested to read in the biography of the pre-war Yorkshire and England bowler Bill Bowes ("An Unusual Celebrity" by Jeremy Lonsdale - an excellent read) that Bowes, as a pace bowler, was told not to bend or run unnecessarily. He was allegedly hauled before the Yorkshire committee for chasing a ball to the boundary.

Yes, that's about it - Eric took 2323 wickets and scored 1673 runs, Bill Bowes took 1639 wickets and scored 1531 runs.

Yes, he is.

No but along the right lines.

While we await the next set of teasers from Highveld, here is a question:
What first class cricket record does Eric Hollies hold, where the next on the list is Bill Bowes, the old Yorkshire and England fast bowler?

I agree that Ed could hardly have said that AD is a rubbish captain and nobody likes him. But he did seem to speak sincerely. As the great George Burns said: “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made.”

GerryShedd wrote:

Chief Executive says:

" Short term, respected journalist Brian Halford will step in to cover remaining County Championship and One Day Cup games, starting with the Essex review.
Long term, we’ve recruited an experienced sports Head of Media. He’s from Warwickshire, has good sporting instinct, journalistic knowledge, and a passion for red and white ball cricket with great ideas about how we produce timely, informative news for Members on cricket at every level of the Club. I’m excited about the fresh focus he will bring when he joins in October."

Brian is a safe pair of hands; and we await the announcement of the identity of the permanent replacement.

Well, here we are in October; and unless I have missed it, I've seen no announcement about the identity of the new Head of Media who is/was due to join the Club this month.

According to the Telegraph, the experiment with the Kookaburra ball in county cricket has been abandoned - it's the Dukes ball for all 14 games from now on.

They will never take to the field as a team; but Ed has been selected as captain of the PCA MVP team of the season:
https://edgbaston.com/news/ed-barnard-is-selected-as-the-captain-of-pca-team-of-the-season/

Yes, he had a busy summer.
He had some interesting things to say. Firstly, he said he was glad that the 14 match Championship season is being retained, though he did acknowledge that there may be quicker bowlers than him who take more out of themselves who struggle a bit more with the amount of cricket; and some of the juxtapositions of fixtures are problematic.
He spoke highly of Alex Davies as captain (sorry, guys, but he did!)
He also said that he would really like to play in The Hundred and was disappointed not to be picked for one of the teams. He saw this as a chance to play against some of the best players in the world and that it might open the door for him to get some overseas franchise opportunities. He did think, though, that it should be changed into a T20 competition.
He said that he still has nightmares about the last over of the Blast match against Somerset.
Plenty more; and he came across as a very sincere and likeable character.

Drawing a blank on this. Give us a clue on the player's nationality, please.

Ed Barnard is the speaker at the Cricket Society event at Edgbaston tomorrow afternoon. It will be interesting to hear what he says about cricketer workload, bearing in mind that he played all 14 four-day games plus 15 T20 and eight 50 over matches this year.

Support for the PCA view here:
https://sportsgazette.co.uk/county-crickets-crossroads-quantity-over-quality-chosen-by-ecb/
The writer's credibility is not enhanced when he mentions a player that he calls George Garrot.

Thanks for the quiz, Highveld. Keep them coming; but not too difficult, to be kind to dumb clucks like me.

Yes