mad
Member
Couldn't get to a game yesterday of course with the Bears in action but there were some potentially mouthwatering ties and the round of matches certainly lived up to expectations. Managed to watch the last 3 or 4 overs at Halesowen on thre livestream for the thrilling finish there. Similar scenes at Ombersley where Moseley who've stumbled along since the formation of the ECB Premier League with a few relegations along the way, suddenly do look a decent outfit again - maybe just maybe could get back to their successful years from the 1980's.
https://www.birminghamleague.org/story/premier_division_one_review_23rd_april_2725
There's a couple of cup semi-finals today too
Today yet more noises from press twits about 3 divisions of 6 including barmy proposals to merge the points from CC, T20 and whatever other formats they decide to allow us to watch
Have to confess I am getting pretty fed up with people who profess to report on cricket in the media who never have to pay to get in telling those who do that we paying members are wrong and they are right for insisting on fewer games (presumably chiefly because they hate driving up and down the country having to watch 16 (now 14, soon to be they hope 10 or even fewer) rounds of championship cricket FOR FREE by the way.
If the ECB do get their way I do trust they are prepared to compensate the counties for the reduced membership and ticket sales income they will face or alternatively the ECB will subsidise the travel expenses to away matches for all members for - minimum 2 rounds of CC matches - to make up for the reduction in home matches available on the membership.
8 days first class cricket fewer on the membership. We face the prospect of a shrunken game brought about by people with shrunken heads
Interesting. Getting more and more like football now with this kind of speculation
Some good performances today although a right old Warwicks style collapse after a good top order effort chiefly from Adam Hose and Hamza Shaikh who looks the business I have to say especially for a 15 yr old. Moseley's ground seems to be having some money spent on it too new drainage etc... probably needed in case there's a summer deluge a few days before the Commonwealth games teams arrive at their training camp and the outfield while still not pristine flat and a bit bumpy in places looks far better than last few years when they've had weddings and car boot sales on there.
https://live.nvplay.com/ecb/#mae0f460d-aaf7-44c7-881b-dbdfd68f2754
This somewhat curious role now passes to Rob Key on a free transfer from Sky TV.
https://www.birminghamleague.org/story/premier_division_one_review_16th_april_2716
Several close games in very pleasant weather this weekend. Standout performances from Craig Miles & Ateeq Javid. Also good to see Adam Hose in the runs and 2nd division runs & wickets for Graham Wagg
Plenty of games in the area this weekend to make up for no Warwickshire game lots of county first team players on show
The BDPCL website is smoother this year also and I like the Play cricket link to the 4 feeder leagues https://youtu.be/6KOSEchzMbM
Birmingham League Saturday I'm sure all eyes will be on Knowle & Dorridge v Leamington and their livestream but several Bears connections at Moseley v Smethwick too. Check out the K&D side though https://twitter.com/KandDCC/status/1514626997019979777?s=20&t=-Cr8NXwx2wXE3FGBdrCHIg
Don't forget the Graham Williamson Trophy Quarter Finals are on Sunday too
Johal probably needs a few games in his legs just like Henry Brookes. My first look at Furrer tall left armer could well be handy in future. Lintott's first wicket was off a full toss everyone was creasing apart from the poor batter although he admitted himself he was reprieved in the morning when Burgess failed to hang onto a Stone short ball gloved off the hips. 4 drops in the slips was unlike Bears too although they were all sharp chances
Didn't see the email newsletter but the website now has a tab showing the offers
https://edgbaston.com/warwickshire-ccc/member-info/#benefits
Days 2 & 3 rained off. Pity. I wonder if they'll both forfeit innings to set up a run chase for Glamorgan tomorrow
94 mins
Andy Nash former Somerset chairman on probably my favourite cricket podcast this week. Well worth a listen. He suggests perhaps the worm might be turning given David Lloyd's, Mark Butcher, our own Farbrace and Peter Moores coming out over the last week or so defending the county game in the case of at least one of them performing a volte face now no longer employed by Sky/ECB/BBC and having to toe the party line in contrast to Aggers over the last couple of months hitching himself to the wrecking ball for obvious reasons.
Impressed with both Hamza Shaikh (15) and Amir Khan (16) today and also the ground is up another notch with the seating and boundary fence as well as the humungous net at the Cape Hill End to prevent sixes leaving the ground. Can't be many county sides with a second XI/development ground like that. Like a mini Loughbrough now. Benjamin right on the stroke of lunch silly way to get out big booming drive when he should just block it out. Quite a dark green pitch and tomorrows weather won't alter things much
Was informed earlier today that Notts, Lancs and Essex are the reciprocal counties for Warwicks members to gain entry for CC matches. Of course not if/when Warks are playing there. Derbyshire apparently not this year so will seek confirmation on that.
Updated - only Notts and Lancs but both represent great news for Warks members
https://edgbaston.com/warwickshire-ccc/member-info/#benefits also suggests Essex
A mix of three and four day games might be what we end up with again if the counties and Strauss/ECB and the players cannot agree to a sensible schedule for 2023 with all 4 day matches. There obviously needs to be more championship cricket in July and August than has been scheduled last couple of years and one way of fitting in a couple more rounds there whilst preserving all this free time the players now have to play golf/watch their favourite Premier League team, is to have a few rounds of 3 day matches. It would be seen as a backward step by many and they'd be right and it woud probably only last 1 season before they got rid of those rounds altogether and went back to just having CC games in April, May and September but only 10 of them instead of the 14 we are fortunate to still have. Can CC cricket survive in those months competing with football season? Either the Hundred has to go or CC will die basically
Agree with that about the lack of advertising although it is worth pointing out that the people in charge of marketing this format of the game at Edgbaston are trying, they do lots of social media these days etc... in a desperte effort to make up for the fact we don't really have any local press around here anymore - The Evening Mail is a shell of an organisation now compared to what it was 15-20 years ago. Thank lord for local BBC radio or else Warwicks would get no coverage at all we all know the national media are only interested in Surrey, Lancs and Yorkshire that hasn't changed and likely never will. Also the marketing dept for county cricket really are fighting an uphill battle aren't they. Thursday and yesterday were bloody freezing, People don't really think about cricket until May or possibly last week in April and then it's June, July and August when county attendances used to increase as folks had no football to go to at the weekend.
Cricket also has multiple audiences and over the last 20 years its members have become steadily older and tended to be more inclined to go on a Monday or Tuesday rather than the weekend when they have other commitments - seeing the grandkids etc... Younger potential fans also tend to have less 'dossing time' to be able to get into the sport too they are saddled with debt as graduates so lose those 3-4 months in summer to while away at the cricket instead doing all sorts of casual work so wheras in the 90's you'd have maybe a couple hundred 18-30 year olds on a Saturday and younger kids going on a Sunday these age groups are in the single or at best double digit figures now.
I would love to know how many 'life memberships' the club has these days. Used to be loads in the 90's/early 2000's as folks retired from work and bought one keeping their fingers crossed that they might get 15-20 years use of it. Again there is no incentive for retired folks in 2022 to purchase life memberships anymore if cricket is mostly in April and September plus these will be folks who were in their 40's and 50's when cricket started being hidden behind a paywall so there are far fewer older people now as a % of the general population who are actually into county cricket. All this will take years to fix and sadly there seems little prospect the folks in charge of the game are interested in addressing these issues.
It is a difficult sport to be invested in for the average punter though. No wonder numbers have dwindled. David Hopps article on the day's events today is a thoughtful one not so much a negative about the Bears approach/play in this case but more a lament about where the game is now. Why isn't county cricket England's summer sport anymore? For the majority of the sports public cricket hasn't even registered yet this year and that's for folks who are actually into the footy, rugger and motor racing (and yes, plenty will have T20 tickets or a ticket to a test match) let alone those who can't get into sports.
For those with somewhat of a passing interest today if they had a spare day and were at a loose end would have held little appeal either. For those who are fans from the past lapsed members etc.. they might consider today had the weather played ball or had something tangible been riding on it or had it been promoted better or even publicised at all?!! and so on and so on
For Saturdays/any days for that matter - to work it needs to be regularised for folks to get used to it over time again like folks were in the mid 1990's Saturday attendances at Edgbaston and Worcester were healthy and made up of some of the folks (older perhaps) who'd been on the Thurs/Fri topped up by a fair few hundred folks who had been at work all week
Home one Saturday, away the next and so on and so forth - it used to work. As did having a family fun day Sunday League competition and finishing day 4 of the CC match on the Monday which was a good place to have Day 4 as on occasion the game wouldn't last that long. Mainly though it was the regularity of home-away-home-away from the last week in April until the first week in September and throughout the peak summer months which helped build up a steady following of the proper game.
They could replicate this now by having a proper T20 league on Sundays if they thought about the spectators but the problem is the spectators are no longer anywhere near a priority. Centralised TV contracts are the priority these days hence the need for blocks of single formats making for a choppy stop-start kinda season with no rhyme or reason and no incentive for the average sports fan or retired person to follow in the local press or on the local radio or for young folks to get the gist of.
Crowd was okay up to and around the lunch interval (as good as previous days) but it was much cooler than Friday and it became more and more clouded over in the afternoon plus football, golf and the grand national on so thinned significantly. An excellent three sessions of top class first division county championship cricket for me. On the whole their bowlers were much better than ours in terms of a threat - like yesterday there wasn't much that beat the bat - very few nicks or lbw shouts at all this game and Topley/Roach tended to just bowl full and stright with the occasional bumper - although Jordan Clark got a bit of lift and movement towards the very end a few edges began flying through the slip region - their use of the new ball alongside the game situation was more in Surrey's favour but it helped they had bowlers fit and firing to come in for 3rd and 4th spells wheras Brookes and Rhodes for me looked a bit undercooked yesterday so we had to rely on Briggs for any sort of control and save bowling OHD to death.
Maybe one for the purists but I can't see any reason for negativity about the team over the last 3 days (christ the Cricinfo bloke doing reports on Warwicks in this game sounds so downbeat about Warwicks in general - although to be fair to him he did point out England couldn't half have done with a bit of the spirit and doggedness Warwicks have shown over the past 12 months) The team is by no means the finished article but once again have fought as they did for much of last season and on this occasion against much more hyped opposition suppose that goes with the territory for Surrey hype follows them and they do look a good side perhaps too easily blunted on good pitches though
Thought they all bowled quite well in the morning session. Rhodes and Miles unable to offer any control however and Brookes deteriorated in the middle session. He will improve as he gets more games into his legs. Whether that is enough only time will tell. Credit to Surrey and Foakes in particular today made the most of helpful conditions yesterday morning when it was nigh on impossible to bowl and field to a high standard and cashed in today by being careful first hour and not chasing runs just putting the loose ones away. On the whole the players stuck at it I thought against a better all round batting line up than any they'd faced in 2020 or 2021
Sorry to interrupt the thread but does anyone know if Warwicks have any reciprocal agreements with other counties for the CC games this season like we did when we were in Div 2 and also in 2019? I know Notts members have it and can watch today's game for free also Hants have one with Gloucestershire and Essex. I was thinking of going to a game next Thursday if the weather is nice either Derby or Notts as it's a week off for Warwicks.