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.

I KNOW NOTHING! (see earlier post for details.) Kai Smith. They can't nick him for the hundred can they?

Bad news: I reckon that's 30 - 40 too many.
Good news: I'm a lousy judge.

I think Kent charge already and made £5k or so in 2023. If that was for a full year I'd think leaving it free would be better than charging. And getting people to register might well help. Also if the figures for the value of the Hundred are correct the Warwickshire board will be hard at work devising a distribution to long suffering members rather than thinking of new charges.

I thought I saw something that Chris Benjamin might leave at the end of the season? If so Zen is maybe more replacing him than Rhodes.

Yes, 1st class average of 27 and seems best as a red ball player. Will be pushing for a place in the 4 day team and fills a need. Does say he won't be joining until the winter, shame as he would have been useful for the September relegation fight.

Some of the criticism is over the top. We have three batters with 2024 cc averages of over 50 (Davis, Burgess and Yates), Barnard averaging 47 and Rhodes 41. Jacob Bethell is emerging as a strong all formats player - Dan Mousley has struggled in the championship but these things happen. And we have a decent crop of batsmen and a spin bowler at U19 level. It's disappointing that in the two games we lost we got into positions to win but I think Davis and Robinson are fine as a captain and coach combination.
Having said that I don't think it's a surprise that we've come up short on the pace bowling as we always looked thin . We haven't had a decent spinner since Jeetan Patel left - in recent seasons no spinner hasn't really mattered but with generally good batting pitches (too good in some cases) spin is more relevant this season. We don't produce good bowlers and don't seem to be prepared to recruit good championship bowlers or at least not enough of them. I also agree that the approach of bringing in emergency overseas players hasn't worked.

Barker one of my favourite players, so mixed emotions seeing him turn the game against us. Such a skilful bowler.

We somehow seem to have gone from having no fit bowlers to more than we know what to do with. I had a quick look at his stats, Norwell hasn't played many T20s and I'm not sure if he's played any for us? His record isn't great - going for almost 10 an over but perhaps a bit unfair to judge him on that. I'd expect us to be focused on getting him back for the second half of the championship - think there's a second xi game coming up and maybe he'll be OK to go in that.