Highveld wrote:

Tazim definately bowls with a leg spinners action, and bowls a googly and top spinner as well as the lg break.

He's a good polite kid that seems to work hard on his game. He is definately a good prospect, but not sure if he's ready for regular county first team cricket now. He'd benefit from a full season of 4 day second team games and working with a good specialist spin coach. Today he was probably pushing the ball through to reduce the change of been hit.

Also, I think he's the first player from the Attock club to play List A cricket
Thanks Highveld; thought he was bowling legbreaks, but cricinfo says offspinner.

He's also predicting tough teats ahead. Not sure what we're getting into.

Feel really sorry for the players who had an excellent T20 season. I don't really have a problem with the format though especially as our one win came when we snuck into the quarters. I doubt we choked, short form cricket is very tight and a decent team can beat a good team fairly often. Maybe the 50 over competition this year.

Very impressed by how the team has responded to Sam Hain being injured. I thought we'd really struggle without him. Also, although he's not the most popular person on this forum, Davies does have a good record as captain - has he lost one yet? It will be interesting to see if we sign another bowler now Hassan is going - he'll leave a big gap but previous short term "emergency" signings haven't done well.

Thing is Stokes had apparently asked for flat fast pitches. I've watched a lot of cricket at Edgbaston and can only remember one quick pitch. A pitch that was 22 yards of bleurgh was predictable. I'd like to see someone senior in English cricket say, the groundsman's job is to produce a pitch that produces a good contest between bat and ball and its the job of the players and coaches to win games on those pitches.

Hasan just out. I'd declare now - quick runs are OK but no point pootling about.

Think I saw on the website Hassan was "targeting the Notts championship game.

Long piece in the Guardian about Moeen and his Dad, Munir.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/06/munir-ali-moeen-ali-birmingham-warwickshire-cricket

Quite interesting - some things I didn't know. My guess is Moeen will say no to an England test recall, he's been asked before and always gone through the motions of thinking about it before turning it down.

This in today's Guardian (Ali Martin)
He looked absolutely cherry ripe when I saw him bowl in pre-season but a random slip in wet conditions jarred his back and a disc is now impinging on a nerve. As such, he’s due to have an injection next week and see how it pulls up. Some days he feels good to go, others less so.

Great result, made my day. Don't know who was responsible but (4 games in) looks like we made some really shrewd decisions over the winter. As for negative views of Warwickshire, seems to come with the territory - every time we've won the title in my life time it's been met with a mixture of backhanded compliments and downright whinging. Makes it all the sweeter when we come through.

Yeah I tend to agree. But don't think they will do that with Barnard on 91. One of the (many) things I'll never understand about professional cricketers.

Woakes for a bowler for me. Doesn't really matter which one as if we have good luck with injuries makes sense to rotate a bit during the April / May rush. Pretty sure they will pick Mousley; his batting at Taunton made good sense given where the game was and you can't say to players be positive but you're dropped if it goes wrong. Small point but a long term bug bear of mine, it would be good if the club did a weekly injury update - does anyone know when Norwell and Briggs might be available?

Thought we meandered from tea on day 3. Given the match position a win was unlikely but as we've seen on the last day of the last two seasons if you have a plan to win there's always a chance it might work and in this instance I couldn't see us losing. Still plenty of good individual performances and hopefully more to come.

Excellent knock by Davies. Looks like Mousley has come out to play some shots. Ah cancel that.

Not a bad first day but the early wickets followed by fight back seems to be a (frustrating) trend. On the pace point I remember Hasan Ali being "sharp" maybe not 90mph but quick enough or was I imagining things? Had a look on the Somerset Grockles forum, their view is that yesterday's no play was down to incompetence rather than precipitation. Should be some ECB sanction, losing a day's play to can't be bothered isn't acceptable.

Lot's of good comments. Red ball statistician Edmund Bayliss (see twitter) has us finishing 7th. The batting looks weaker than last year and Mark Robinson must be thinking 2022 was an off year for Davis and Yates and that one of Bethell or Mousley can develop into a 1st class number 5. That seems optimistic and Hain and Burgess are (perhaps) unlikely to excel the way they did in 2022. Briggs as the spinner is another potential weak spot, but given Surrey won the CC with no spinners last year does that matter? Seam bowling certainly looks strong picking three out of Woakes, Norwell, Rushworth, OHD & Hassan Ali should allow a bit of rotation in the early season rush although Henry B's decline is worrying and Ali not available for the end of season games. Barnard and Burgess look a solid 6&7. By my reckoning w ere playing Northants, Lancs, Notts and Hampshire just the once and that seems quite a kind fixture list. On that basis perhaps we finish 4/5?
I predict finals day in the 20/20 and out in the group stages of the 50 over.

Used to love his Far Side cartoons. Definitely an outside the box signing.

The daffodils are pushing up, spring is almost here and my review of Warwickshire's 2022 annual report and financial statements is here if you are interested.
(https://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2023/02/warwickshire-2022-annual-report-and.html)

If you're just a bit interested, it was a very good year.

RB

Yes I was surprised by Yorkshire as they are a well supported county, but only 3k members is correct. And Notts was > 8k as recently as 2018, but has fallen since with a big drop off in 2020, a slight uptick in 2021 but not back to 2019 levels.

An interesting article. Us county members get it in the neck don't we? Watching cricket, spending money - we're ruining the game. One point, there's a line in the article "There are only around 70,000 members across 18 clubs – the exact figure is a closely guarded secret". This is piffle. County membership numbers are publicly available information and can be accessed by anybody with an internet connection. Or you could look at my blog, http://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2022/11/county-members.html which sets it all out in a table. Cricket in England has many strengths and a few weaknesses, one of those weaknesses is lazy, ill - informed journalists. (George Dobell and one or two others are obvious exceptions, but overall standard is low.)