Sad to see Olly go but good to hear he has his future sorted out. Given his injury problems it doesn't make much difference to the championship team but we are very light in 20/20 bowling.

Clearly Jonny Bairstow.

And 3 wickets in the 2nd innings. Someone should snap him up.

Didn't see the game but clearly disappointing result. We do seem poor at chasing down totals and I think other teams have sussed this out. Still The Blast is a funny old tournament and all the teams will lose a few. 3 out of four 4 ain't bad, as Meatloaf almost sang.

Think he's in the CC squad to play New Zealand (along with Dom Sibley) which is perhaps a sign we don't see him as a 20 over player.

Yes I agree with both sides of your comment. Shame Warwickshire and English cricket more generally can't put the same effort into developing domestic cricketers as they do into nicking young talent from other countries. No blame on Che of course, who has an English passport and is furthering his career

Good to take some wickets and doubly good that Nathan McAndrew got 4. Funnily enough I don't feel limiting their lead changes the match situation, we still need to bat for a couple of sessions to draw the game. Bit like last year's game at Old Trafford.

Yes I think lack of money was why we didn't join the Pakistani bowler chase. I have Warwickshire dead last in my county financial rankings (see below). Also signing Davies from Lancashire probably used up quite a bit of budget and left us rummaging through the bargain bin when it came to overseas four day players. And it's only one bad day, McAndrew may look like an inspired decision by the end of the season.

http://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2022/04/bentley-forbes-consulting-rankings-2020.html

Tayls79 wrote:

Yeah. It's hard to think much further than money to be honest. Weirdly, bowling is now our issue and especially if Stone and Woakes are missing. The rest of the attack is right arm and not express so a left arm quick would have been great - this was obvious from the end of last year. Shaheen Afridi was available and keen on the UK - but ot looks like we could never get near him.

BristolBear wrote:

On McAndrew I believe he arrived at Edgbaston on the second day of the Essex match. So in the country just under a week.

I thought he was supposed to be a bit quicker, bowl a heavy ball, get some bounce, a bit like Norwell. But we’ll see how he pans out.

What doesn’t change is that in terms of available players, no way do I believe that he was the best possible bowler the club could acquire for the overseas position. I listed the calibre of players in an earlier comment, so I’d love to know want Farbrace was doing when all those other bowlers were signing deals elsewhere.

Tayls79 wrote:

Yeah. It's hard to think much further than money to be honest. Weirdly, bowling is now our issue and especially if Stone and Woakes are missing. The rest of the attack is right arm and not express so a left arm quick would have been great - this was obvious from the end of last year. Shaheen Afridi was available and keen on the UK - but ot looks like we could never get near him.

BristolBear wrote:

On McAndrew I believe he arrived at Edgbaston on the second day of the Essex match. So in the country just under a week.

I thought he was supposed to be a bit quicker, bowl a heavy ball, get some bounce, a bit like Norwell. But we’ll see how he pans out.

What doesn’t change is that in terms of available players, no way do I believe that he was the best possible bowler the club could acquire for the overseas position. I listed the calibre of players in an earlier comment, so I’d love to know want Farbrace was doing when all those other bowlers were signing deals elsewhere.

I thought Miles was unlucky not to start against Essex. Might it be McAndrew v Brookes for the last place?

Definitely our day. Watched the last hour on the feed, Essex bowled well and the ball was swinging all the time. A good effort (plus a little lucky) to get to the close just two down. Hopefully batting gets easier tomorrow and we can build a decisive lead.

You'd have to be stupid to try and predict county cricket: so here goes.
Champo = 3rd
T20 = Winners
Player of the season = Danny Briggs
Breakthrough = Henry Brooks
Team for game 1 = Sibley, Yates, Mousley, Hain, Benjamin, Rhodes, Burgess, Briggs, Miles, Norwell, OHD

Understandable decision to dismiss first Giles and now Silverwood. Feel a bit sorry for both men though, some of the press have portrayed them as idiots but they have very good records at Warwickshire and Essex and Giles even managed to get a tune out of Lancashire. Plus England is a tough job, success for the one day side is "all down to Morgan" & the domestic structure for Test cricket is set up to fail.

If the link doesn't work I've just copied as text
http://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2022/01/warwickshire-2021-accounts.html

And you can - hopefully just copy that into a browser.

And I've done my annual review of the annual report (plus added ranting). http://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2022/01/warwickshire-2021-accounts.html
Reabank

Good article in The Times about counties charging young players (or more accurately the parents of young players) to take part in training and development squads. I do love county cricket but have always felt part of its rationale is that it develops the next generation of cricketers. If young players are being charged rather than youth schemes being ability based it makes even me wonder whether the counties might have outlived their usefulness . One bit of good news is Warwickshire were named (alongside Somerset and Glamorgan) as a county that didn't charge young players (or only charged a "nominal" amount).

The decision to take no specific action against Tim Bresnan sits very badly with me. I appreciate Warwickshire are in a tricky position and natural justice requires that people aren't thrown out of a job just because they are accused of something, there needs to be a proper process. I'm no expert on race relations but I'd imagine in some circumstances there's no need to punish individuals if we can acknowledge what we did wrong in the past & try to do better in the future. But at some point there has to be accountability at an individual level. Azeem Rafiq identifies Bresnan as one of the principal racist bullies at Yorkshire and it's clear other Yorkshire players accused Bresnan of bullying. There are reports that Warwickshire spoke to Rafiq but no indication they spoke to anybody else at Yorkshire for an independent view or that they asked Yorkshire for details of their investigation into bullying accusations. I also think there are questions to be asked about individuals at Warwickshire other than Bresnan - when an experienced player is signed, the county is hiring a personality as well as a bundle of cricketing skills. I'm sure there's a lot of county gossip, what did people on the Warwickshire staff know about Bresnan and about accusations of racism and bullying? That might be a particularly uncomfortable question for Will Rhodes who would have known Bresnan from their days in the same Yorkshire squad.
It's also not clear who at Warwickshire has dealt with the investigation. If they have taken it seriously they would have appointed a barrister, someone trained in asking questions and assembling evidence.
It might be the case that Warwickshire have done all these things, but as members we don't know because we haven't been contacted about the issue and as far as I can see there is nothing on the web site about their "investigation". There is lots about the county board winning a "Chance to Shine" award. Maybe I'm too cynical but it seems to me Warwickshire view this as public relations problem not a racism problem.
Anyway I've probably rattled on for too long, but as I said a while ago everyone deserves a fair process. But that applies just a much to young players wanting to make their way at Edgbaston & Azeem Rafiq as it does to Tim Bresnan. As far as I can see the only process has been to brush the whole thing under the carpet.

Championship player of the year - Norwell
Young player of the year - Bethell
T20 player of the year - Brathwaite
Overall player of the year - Norwell

Batsman of the year - Yates
Bowler of the year - Miles (Taken a lot of criticism so so good to see him succeed.)
Fielder of the year - Bresnan
Moment of the year - Burgess stumping Joe Clarke off OHD against Notts.
Clanger of the year - Not many - But batting 2nd in the Blast Q final?
“Turning point” of the year - So many but 4th day win at Notts.

Good performance from Kent - thought we'd struggle to chase 160. Very quick look - I reckon we won 2 lost 5 batting second this year & won 5 lost 2 batting first. And we won the toss?