Highveld
Member
I believe we now have 22 players contacted for next season. (Please add/amed if I've omitted anyone)
The 22 are
Name Pos
Sam Hain Bat
Rob Yates Bat
Dan Mousley Bat/Bowl
Will Rhodes Bat/Bowl
Jacob Bethell Bat/Bowl
Ed Barnard Bat/Bowl
Moeen Ali Bat/Bowl White Ball Only
Chris Benjamin Bat/Wkt
Alex Davies Bat/Wkt
Kai Smith Bat/Wkt
George Maddy Bat/Wkt
Chris Woakes Bat/Bowl ECB Central Contract
Danny Briggs Bowl
OHD Bowl
Liam Norwell Bowl
Henry Brookes Bowl
Ethan Brookes Bat/Bowl
Manoj Johal Bowl
Craig Miles Bowl
George Garett Bowl
Michael Burgess bat/ wkt
Jake Lintott bowl
Excellent article by ali Martin of the guardian, talking to OHd & Liam Norwell about the last day
An overseas player who is able to contribute all season, not just be here to use the club as a training exersize before going off to play in domestic cricket would be a massive improvement.
There are some interesting quotes on the Worcestershire website about the impact Azhar Ali had on their club, on and off the field, this year. Sadly it's not possible to make such comments about most of the overseas players at Warwickshire over the last two seasons.
Much more thought and research needs to go into the selection and signing of overseas players going forwards.
Going into a season with Miles, Johal and Garrett as the back up seam bowlers is a scary prospect. None of the three have shown to be a viable option for D1 cricket.
Effectively he is replacing Shan Mahmood at Derbyshire, hopefully he succeeds and is on a better contract.
It is very frustrating that the club is favouring an underperforming mercanry, Davies, over a local born and produced player, who is better.
The LA Dodgers and Colorado Rockies are due to finish a 6 game series this evening, but both sides have been resting many of their starters, especially as Dodgers start their play off games next week, after winning 110 of their 161 games.
The last game of the World Series will be in early November.
In MLB the teams play 162 games over a c180 day season, including multiple long flights with games the following day.
I see the club has done FB posts about Hose and Stone today.
The video of the after match activities in the bar confirmed 5 players, including Lamb, were leaving.
We know Hose, Sibley and Stone are 3 of the 5, so it would be safe to assume that either Sidebottom or Garret is the 5th to leave.
I'm even more concerned about the mercanries who sign up for part of the season, and then disappear after one or two games.
Much more thought, and research needs to go into our player recrutement, both at home and overseas.
Sometimes family comes first. We forget that most players have a partner who may have their own career which has opportunities in other parts of the country.
As far as I can remember no.
There was no second team cricket while the RL cup was on, and Matt wasn't included in the side for the games after that competition.
Yates did play in the one game before the last series of championship games, and scored 4 in his only innings!
It looks like the club stopped him from playing for his club in the Birmingham league too, as he didn't appear in the last few games, unlike Ed Pollock of Worcs, who played on the Saturday before a championship game starting on the Monday.
On his performances, for all but 2 days, this season Yates did not perform at an acceptable level, indeed his performances made Adrian Shankar (the con man who fooled Worcestershire into signing him on a 3 year deal) look a world beater.
Lamb was doing a good job, averaging c48, was good in the field and was a localy born and produced player with lots of ability.
The waay he was dropped from the side and just forgotten about shows a failure of logical thought, and man management, that even Liz Truss couldn't manage!
Decent article from Cricinfo on Liam Norwell
The judgement of Robinson/Farbrace has to doubted.
They appointedade Mason & rSheik as bowling coaches, a very significant downgrade on the previous bowling coach, who looked after all of the clubs bowlers.
Long term contracts were given to Yates, Johal, Davies & Lintott none of whom did anything to justify the value or length of contract this season.
Their policy on overseas signings is a failure, with some of the worst overseas players to come to the club ever. Over the past two years only McAndrew and Malan actually made a useful contribution. The policy shows a lack of research into who is available and just taking a quick option, that turns out not to even honor the contract. That is madness both in cricketing terms and financially with the costs involved in signing non UK players.
A local player, who developed at a local club and always gave the club 100%
It's worse than madness, it's deliberate and gross incompetence by whoever made the decision, but continuing to pick a specialist batsman who was averaging under 12 all season, shows their inability to make logical decisions. Thats not mentioning their short term overseas player signings, or the appointment of very poor bowling coaches for the first and second team bowling coach positions.
Has it been confirmed Lamb is leaving?
It needs one of us to win the lottery, I'm sure if we offered to club a £20M low interest loan they'd make us feel very welcome.
Must admit a private box for life and a large credit towards catering and bar purchases would be a fair return on investment. :-)
Davies's record looks better than it truly was due to having two decent innings towards the end of the season, overall he was consitantly bad, and Yates was even worse. Rhodes may not have had any big scores but contributed consistantly.
Full averages for the championship are here