Quite right - 7 not 8 as I had it.

Some definite good points. Bamber looks like he'll improve the squad and at 26 he'll get better in the next 3- 4 years. A younger and more homegrown (8?) side than we've put out for a long time. Seems like the approach is, where there's a debate between two players, go for the younger one, which I think makes sense. Some criticism of Booth, I didn't think much to him last year but I thought he bowled pretty well against Sussex and could have easily had 3- 4 wickets. Downsides of course. Hopefully Fernando will improve but I do wonder about short term signings. The pitch started off green but quickly died. The pitches are hampering the county side (Robinson said he thought they undermined him) and the pitch prepared for the last ashes series was widely criticised. I presume the only answer is to relay the square?

I think it shows they are thinking seriously about what skills they need and maybe there is an opportunity to be the best county at using data and the best at preventing injuries. I wish him all the best.
Looking at the structure as a whole it seems to me light on cricket experience. There's no - one on the board with top level playing experience, chairman and CEO are from rugby backgrounds and the top cricket bloke (whatever they want to call him) has never worked in cricket. That leaves Westwood as the most senior cricket person but he's just stepping up to a new role. I would have thought Matt Walker would have been a better fit at either head coach or top cricket person with Westwood and / or Thomas reporting to him.

Thanks Gerry. Maybe I'm a moaner but I find this a bit depressing. A county cricket club gets a windfall and the first thing it thinks of doing with the money is build a hotel. I mean if that's all they're going to do with money, then they have £15m coming as a share of the ECB's sale of a 49% stake in the Hundred franchises, plus a gift of a 51% stake in the Warwickshire franchise, valued at £40m. If Warwickshire sold the 51% stake they would get 80%, so £32m, giving £47m in total. There's about 4,000 members so if they split that across us, £11,750 a member. I'd rather they do that than build a hotel which isn't worth building if they have to finance it at commercial rates.

Although I was never as anti - Robinson as some (most?) of you it's probably as well to move on. What I don't understand is the order - I would have thought you appoint a director of cricket / performance and let that individual have final say on who coaches the various teams. The coaches and DOC then put the teams together , that way the people responsible make the decisions and the people making the decisions are responsible. We seem to have gone the other way, players, coaches, DOC.
Also a bit surprised Tony Frost has been moved aside. I'd say our batting is in pretty good order? Young players: Mousley, Bethell and Yates have established themselves in at least one format and Bethell and Mousley have played for England. Hamza will hopefully join them. Davies has just had his best season in first class cricket and the departed Burgess converted from a good keeper who couldn't bat well enough to make a county side to an excellent number 7. Seems good to me, perhaps the view is that Westwood was a bigger factor than Frost?
Anyway best of luck to the new appointees and looking forward to 2025 at Edgbaston.

Hello all

Hope people don't mind me borrowing this thread but I've done an analysis of the financial position of 17 of the first class counties. Warwickshire continue to climb my table and the full report is
https://sideonviewcricket.substack.com/p/bentley-forbes-rankings

Yep & Rob Yates, Warwick School.

Thanks Terry, interesting article. I don't think anybody would claim Warwickshire's player development has been good. In the club's slight defence it's possible that 5 of the top seven next year will be home grown (stretching a point on Sam H). But bringing through bowlers has been terrible, would Chris Woakes be the last good bowler we developed?

I think there was a membership forum last night. Did anybody go?

Yes my mistake Ethan Bamber. I really thought we had signed Helm, but Bamber looks a better bet! On stats anyway.

Well we survived - although wouldn't have if it had been three points for a win one for a draw. Will Rhodes has been great for us and his losing batting and attitude weakens the squad. I was pleased with Helm coming in but his career record is very similar to Craig Miles and he's not had a good year. I'd say we need to bring in a spinner and a fast bowler and ideally would add a second fast bowler and maybe some batting depth. I totally understand the club wanting to review the set up - you can't just say "better luck next time" after a season like this but it (presumably) takes away time to address the weaknesses in the squad.

I'm not certain if a change of coach is the answer. Some of the comments on this site imply Mark Robinson is an idiot, which might be true, but as coach he's won three county championships (1 with us), 3 county one day competitions (including a T20) and a world cup. So if he is an idiot he's a remarkably lucky one. That said I can understand that even a generally good coach might come up against a specific set of circumstances where its time to move on. Even with breathless reports from "my brother who drinks in the same pub as Dan Mousley's former hairdresser" it's hard for us supporters to know what's happening behind the scenes..
I'd also echo South Coast Exile's comments on the club being led by corporate rather cricketing considerations. Both the chairman and chief executive come from business/ rugby backgrounds which I don't think is appropriate for a cricket member's organisation.

I was pretty gutted. Lots of things to say. The point about group winners going straight to finals day is fair enough but the south division is a lot stronger than the north; they would have to mix the two for automatic qualifiers and that causes problems with the local derby matches.
I'm not sure Gloucestershire are such a bad side, I might have a crafty fiver on them if they are 4th favourites for finals day.
I was speaking to a non - Warwickshire supporting friend whose take on the finals was we lacked batsmen in positions 7 - 9 with good strike rates. Not really why we lost this game where the onus was clearly on one of the top 6 to steer us past a low total. But as a general point I think he might be onto something - perhaps next season we should acknowledge Dan Mousley's USP is as a short form bowler and encourage him to concentrate his batting on playing very quick 4 or 5 ball knocks down the order.
Finally I'm still baffled. In the last four years we have lost 5 quarter finals and one semi - final. In that time we won one quarter final where we were done for all money but Kai Smith scored a hundred. So how does he not get into the team for this match?

Does anybody know why Kai Smith not in the squad. I would have thought he'd play if fit?

Another attempt to get the link to work.

Edit: not sure why it doesn’t like the original link but this should work - Exiled Bear

Substack

Hi Tayls. The Essex stuff is very interesting. I do struggle to see why the ECB is proposing to gift 51% shares in the Hundred franchises to the host counties + MCC. I would have thought that would be breaking company law because a company can't favour one group of shareholders over another but I'm not a lawyer and maybe there is a loop - hole. My belief is that the 51% gift is inappropriate (I think that's pretty clear) and so Warwickshire members should require the hundred shareholding is sold and the money used for something worthwhile. I suspect that once the board realises they aren't going to be able to use the money to build a hotel - out of gold, they'll cool on the whole sale idea. Sadly there's only been feedback from you and Terry and I suppose most just see the issue as too complicated or don't mind Warwickshire being unjustly enriched.
I did do the numbers for how the proceeds from The Hundred might break down for the 18 counties plus MCC https://substack.com/@richardbentley2/p-147203084
But didn't come up with the 1% Tayls refers, I'd say non - hosts get a third to a quarter of what hosts get.

Hi, perhaps time to update this discussion. I think it would be sensible for someone, me at a push, to put a special resolution before the AGM. Not so much in the expectation of success but to remind the board that we are a member's club and "direction of cricket" decisions must be made on the basis of a fair vote of the membership. A special resolution would need to be supported by 250 members & it would be interesting to know if I could expect any support from this forum. More on my concerns below.

As I understand it the ECB is now trying to sell 49% of The Hundred franchises with the proceeds to be split between the 18 first class counties, the MCC and grass roots cricket. The remaining 51% will be gifted to the home franchise county, i.e. Warwickshire end up with a 51% stake in Bham 100. I've two concerns with this, 1. The gift of 51% of the franchises is inappropriate, the franchises are owned by the ECB, effectively, on trust for the whole of cricket so they can't gift 51% of them away to favoured partners. There's also a practical issue here, in the days of the Warwickshire sweep there was an understanding that Warwickshire's windfall wealth needed to be shared out, the county wasn't a profit maximizing business and shouldn't behave like one. I don't believe WCCC's current senior management have that appreciation, they come from business and rugby backgrounds. The members need to ensure the windfall is spent appropriately.
Objection 2 is that if WCCC hold 51% of the Hundred franchise with outside investors holding 49% we will never be sure whether the club is being managed in the interests of its members or the board's new, exciting business friends.
As for what a special resolution would say I think we need to get the board to acknowledge that members have the final say on the board's proposals. So perhaps a resolution could, 1. require the board to sell any 51% Bham 100 holding to the highest reputable bidder and 2 to, at a future special meeting, outline proposals for how it intends to spend its windfall with some proportion going to wider cricket (or maybe just charitable) projects.

Well balanced as ever Gerry. Just one point the Blast had about 1 million attendance prior to the Hundred and although the figures did vary year on year the trend was (maybe) up. That now seems to have gone down to about 800k. So something around 200k / 300k of the Hundred's attendance is cannibalising the Blast.

KingofSpain wrote:

Hugely disappointing to lose another semi final but we did well to get that far with the resources available. We struggled to get big totals on the board and really lost momentum after losing Yates and Hamza.
The emergence of Kai Smith is a big positive and both Taz Ali and Booth made strides forward.
I keep saying it, but we really need a top class batting coach to improve these players. Look at Somerset and the talent they are producing along with vastly improving someone like Andy Umeed, who is unrecognisable from his time with the Bears. Time for Frost to go.
Robinson 's job surely now hinges on making T20 finals day as a minimum requirement. And the small matter of securing our championship status.
Think that's very hard on Frost. We currently have Sam Hain, Rob Yates Dan Mousley, and Jacob Bethell playing first team cricket with decent prospects in Hamza Sheikh, Kai Smith & Theo Wylie. Batting has been pretty consistent this season regardless of format, our problem has been taking 20 wickets in the championship.

Yes obviously disappointing not to reach the final but I do like the 50 over competition. Players being siphoned off for The Hundred isn't really right but it does give you the chance to see a younger generation. For us Kai Smith was the obvious stand out, presumably / hopefully he'll play in the Blast quarter final. I thought Booth and Ali both had solid competitions, Ali seemed calm with bat and ball & like he always had a wicket in him, if a touch expensive. Hamza a tad disappointing but runs at England U19 & A team and might get a chance in next year's county championship? Theo Wylie didn't get much of a look in and will hopefully play more in next year's competition.