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.

Hello All
Hope you're well enjoying World Cup, T20 and the Euros. I have rather belatedly done a review of Warwickshire's 2023 financial statements. Link to the post is
https://sideonviewcricket.substack.com/p/warwickshire-county-cricket-club
I've moved the blog to substack, if you click on the subscribe button, you'll get updates whenever I post.
Although it says subscribe you won't be charged (now or ever) it's just the way substack works.

Burgess being left out is pretty understandable. In his Blast career he has averaged 18 at about 120 runs per hundred balls. Chris Benjamin is averaging 27 at 150. The management is judging that Burgess' keeping doesn't make up for his batting and that seems a pretty solid judgement imo. 2 wins from two I'm quite happy with the start although suspect we have played two of the weaker teams.

Yeah it is a bit crazy - with the possible exception of Italian cycling English cricket is the worst organised sport I can think of. I guess the issue is that all the counties want to play late in the week. In my opinion it would be better if the season wasn't played in blocks then we could fit in a couple of T 20s in May and ease the pressure on prime dates.

A question: assuming a full days play tomorrow, what would people do? Declare overnight to maximize our chances against a struggling side but risk losing or make the game safe and hope to nick it late on? With 8 for a draw and 16 for a win I'd go for make it safe(ish) 4.5 plus an over to win before declaring.

It's an interesting article. The Durham chap is clearly a bit odd - he also refers to county members as the lowest common denominator but Durham doesn't have any members. Later on in the article Richard Gould, current ECB chief executive and former chief executive of Surrey says the issue is more of counties moving away from their members and membership numbers dwindling as a result. It's an interesting point, the last set of filed accounts showed Surrey with 19,000 members, that's double the number in 2018. For other counties the numbers are either flat or have declined over the period.

Thanks Gerry
As ever, well written and fair. I'm a bit more pessimistic than you about the championship and wonder about our fast bowling depth. Batting and spin bowling looks to have more depth and more good prospects coming through than we have had for a while - challenge may be giving them a chance. Agree we seem to have a strong squad for The Blast, fingers crossed we can win a knock - out match or three.

Interesting and thanks for putting up. I've no inside knowledge but looking on I think the ECB under its new(ish) chairman is trying to be more consensual and saying to the counties what do you think. But the counties all think different things. Lancashire love the Hundred as it is and don't want to see it expanded. The medium sized counties would like to join an enlarged Hundred. The smaller counties don't care for The Hundred but like the £1.3m the ECB pays in return for them accepting it. The ECB likes The Hundred just fine but doesn't like the £1.3m it pays to every county.

Hello All
Hope you're wintering well. On my blog I have a review of the financial position of 17 of the 18 first class counties, which includes a financial stability league table. And Warwickshire are off the bottom. Link below.
https://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2024/02/bentley-forbes-consulting-rankings-2022.html

Top post - thanks very much.
Can anybody name the 13 Warwickshire players making their test debuts in the last 50 years? I certainly couldn't.
I'm not sure I agree that the stats indicate knee jerk changes to the test team are a constant feature of selection across the 50 years. The numbers of test debuts have come down quite sharply in recent decades. If you think of a team playing the first test in a new decade you wouldn't expect many of those players to still be playing at test level by the end of the decade so natural attrition will give you 7 or 8 debutants. Then you've got injuries especially to fast bowlers and selectors need to find room for good uncapped players who can improve a team. An art rather than a science but I think 19 debutants in a decade looks bit low.

Very good summing up UrsaMinor, calm authority captures the man & he'll be hard to replace. Does anybody know if there is a premium salary for captaining the county championship / 50 over side? Seems at the moment players are very fixed on playing T20 which I would guess is in the hope of picking up a deal for The Hundred which pays £30k / 50k even for fringe players . Once you have a gig in the Hundred there's the hope of being picked for one of the second tier overseas T20 competitions. Seems the incentives are askew.

Thanks Gerry

Good and very fair review. 7/10 out of 10 for the season seems about right to me.

Thanks to both sides but especially Northants for an excellent afternoon's cricket on what could have been the dullest of dull days. Thought the pitch was good, some pace, a bit of help for the seamers and I suspect a good spinner would have done well on day 4. We were lucky to beat the county stuck to the bottom of division 1 which says something about our weaknesses in top order batting (although a tough job in the CC) and a lack of depth in pace bowling once past the excellent OHD and Chris Rushworth.

Some thoughts about Robinson carrying on as coach. I'd say you have to judge him against what he is resourced for and I'd guess Warwickshire aim / budget to be a first division county that regularly qualifies for T20 finals day. Having won the CC & being in div 1 Robinson has significantly outperformed on the first objective. On the T20 he's slightly underperformed. Overall t20 performances have been about right as shown by finishing top of the group for the last two years but three quarter final defeats an obvious disappointment. But even there I think it's valid to wonder how much is down to the coach and how much just one of those things that will come right if the overall performances continue to be OK.