duplicate post

Interesting chat before the final on 5 live extra. From 10 mins;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001nvfq
Glen Maxwell spoke well on a range of topics although I think he overegged the "burn out" point a tad
Does the Hundred justify itself if all the best players in it are no better than the players on show at Finals Day in the Blast?
And what is the Hundred's impact on the England 50-over ODi side going forwards if the next generation of England white ball players aren't in it but instead playing a random 100 ball format nobody gives a monkey's about?

SC_Bear wrote:

First time I've felt quite resentful on finals day. Seems perverse that the 2 other white ball comps played over a shorter period guarantee the group winners a semi-final place whilst the only reward for group winners in this comp is the same as coming 2nd i.e a home QF. Not suggesting we'd have gone on to win it but I'm finding it very hard to maintain any interest in an all south finals day brought about by the current format.

Trust me you'd not have wanted to be sat there today it was alright in the shelter of the family stand square of the wicket but soon as I moved round to the traditionally sunny seats christ the wind was chilly. I lasted till half time of this final game

Sitting here just highlights for me how many top county players we as Warwickshire members just don't get to see very often any more compared to 20 years ago. You used to see them all pretty much over the course of a two year cycle. Now not the case at all. Think they could do away with the groups stages for this and just have a proper 17 match league of it with top 4 into finals day and if 17 is too many play some of them abroad pre season

Mikkyk wrote:

What a session, is this where our CC season is reginited?

Have to say that 6th wicket decision looked poor. At the very least hit him outside the line.

Not sure about that. Seemed to square the batter up he's missed the ball and struck him perhaps umpires call on off stump. Hard to see from the video but might have just clipped the front pad before thudding into the back pad at which point it looks like it's hitting outside the line but that fraction of a second is ommited from the frames in the video. I'd say it's close enough and defnitely not too high. Reasonable enough decision. Labuschagne got one 2 years ago off Darren Stevens down there everyone went mad about but again to me it looked close enough to be given. Batter has little to complain about other than he's just missed the ball and the pads have stopped it clipping off stump

Certainly makes sense if they're only going to show 2 QF's live in future.

The other way is to use a system similar to the Big Bash and have a preliminary final between the two group winners - this season that would've been Somerset v Warwickshire. Winner of that goes straight to finals day. Loser gets another chance as they play in the elimination games (like quarter final but only need three of them) to see which three sides join the winner of the first game

Sounds complicated but it rewards group winners with two bites at reaching Finals Day

Cynically one might suggest they don't want county championship games on during test matches because it might affect ticket sales for the test matches.

I hope you're right though and next year because there are two tests in August fingers crossed there'll be at least two rounds of Championship Cricket too in August, ideally three

Is a marquee signing that important in the format? Especially considering you only have to finish 4th out of 9 to qualify for the QFs and then it's a bit of a lottery. Away QF might suit Bears better. I think I'd rather play more or less the Royal London squad in the T20 Blast and use it as a development comp from now on. I'm not even sure it would have that much of an effect on the crowds - we'd still get 15k versus Worcester and 10k in a couple of the other group matches/if we had a home QF. Use the money saved in that area to recruit top all round championship and one day players that can play all season

Seems to make no difference whether we sneak into the QFs in 4th place or piss the group. Not sure the format is all that great for supporters of the individual counties. A 14 match group stage followed by a straight 1 match eliminator seems overblown. Certain counties seem to peak at the right time - usual suspects all still involved. I think smaller groups with fewer games would make it easier to swallow losing in the QF every season

And counties placing lots of emphasis on this format (guides recruitment etc...) seems misplaced and frankly silly. Sure the crowds are half decent but one bad game and it's all over for another ten months.

I wish we had a proper limited overs league May thru September to sink our teeth into as county supporters and also a proper knockout cup to dream about trips to the final

Prefer if it was one game a week or straight knockout. I always look forward to watching these games but after seeing one or two they start to get a bit samey all played one after the other. Changes of the season alterations to the grass cover on the wicket and evolving conditions would make it a bit more variable if played as a season long event although they'd probably have to lop off ten overs which wouldn't be the worst idea either

Yes there's a big shelf coming at the end of this summer if we see Jimmy Broad and Woakes all retire at the same time. Curran comes back into the reckoning. How on earth England will miss that lot for home series particularly.

BristolBear wrote:

The class issue I lay purely at the feet of the ECB. They’ve left a huge gulf develop in terms of coaching and funding around the age of 13. State schools don’t have the funding, and coaches will always follow the money like any other profession. And the money is in private schools
I saw a wonderful point from someone on another site, how many dedicated cricket coaches salaries could be paid for from the wages of the players alone in the hundred. Even without the marketing and other crazy costs involved with setting it up, just the players wages could pay for hundreds of dedicated coaches to be kept in state schools and keep the game alive and a wider player pool.
But the coaches are in private schools, those same coaches are often the “pathway” coaches, and it’s easy to see how we get to where we are.
You could agree with local clubs for schools to use their nets and pitches.
Because as good as clubs are when players get to 16 upwards and adult cricket. You need to get to the players when they’re younger, and not have to make parents drive them to training at a club or to matches. Get them whilst they’re at school, they have to be there, get them into the game there. Because some parents won’t consider cricket, won’t take them to a cricket club, so you’ve got to get them into the sport at school age.

Excellent point. The elitism has just meant we have a narrower pool of players to pick from than a country with smaller population like Australia. Because in Australia it has mostly been kept on free to air and not seen as a posh boys sport so it is a viable option for hundreds of kids in all sorts of backgrounds even kids who are from non cricket families - Yugoslav and Greek and Italian communities in Australia from the 1970's onwards have clearly not faced the type of barrier to entry that working class kids of all descriptions have in the UK since the playing fields were sold off, large works were split up so there aren't the factory workplace leagues anymore - miners welfare clubs etc...and then to exacerbate that the promise of 2005 ashes series was squandered when in 2006 the sport hid itself behind a paywall. A generation lost

None of this will make a jot of difference. The very people who have run the sport for the last 15 years will say they've done better than those who ran it the previous 25. Have they???? Sky TV, BBC, ECB, county chief execs at big county clubs all will try to suggest they got a handle on the issue so trust them to come up with the plans to fix the problem. The problem they will suggest rather rudely is the existing members of cricket clubs and the very existence of 'county' cricket itself

You just know they are keen to link this to the rejection (eventually nobody thought it was a good way to reorganize the schedule not even the Warwicks chief executive seemed convinced) of the Strauss Review. We all know it is THESE administrators that allowed the sport to fester in this mess in the first place

Seems to me he's there essentially to cover for Jimmy. Think he's a real chance for Headingley especially if the Lord's test goes all 5 days and if they're still unsure over Wood's fitness. Trouble is Woakes also recovering from long term niggles so I think that explains ECB reluctance to release him to his county very much. Tongue makes sense from a balance of the attack perspective as opposed to having Jimmy Robinson and Woakes

ODI World Cup on free to air would be quite a nice achievable quick fix and show intent - that's if any terrestrial channel will have it

Have we as members been complicit in Warwickshire getting away with not really bringing through local talent?

Relegations in 2008 and again in 2017. Each occasion followed by a quick recruitment process because we as members/supporters demanded instant return to Division 1 so we could compete for the title again and again - so in comes, Barker, Wright, Rankin, Chopra etc... and then Sibley, Rhodes, Norwell, Miles - instead of Warwickshire using the resources at it's disposal to do the hard yakka and bring players through - and really develop their skill set and maybe spend a few more seasons in Division 2 while they get the hang of things. Think of the talent in the local area that's gone to waste or not reached its full potential. Instead we mine the Surrey and Hampshire public school system and cherry pick some talent from other counties and hand them to Graham Welch etc... to fashion into quality seam bowlers

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fxl5b2

Stuart Cain is on towards the end of this BBC podcast and again sounds well meaning.
Thank god ex-umpire John Holder was on just beforehand as he corrected the BBC reporter Dan Roan who tried to suggest that the county members who opposed the Strauss Review last year would be a similar hurdle for the ECB in implementing the findings of this report. Absolutely inapproprate conflation of the two things. Tackling these issues of embedded racism and elitism is on a totally different level to opposing the dreadful half baked Strauss Review that had little to no support going for it by the end of last year

David Hopps said it better than I. Just read his tweet.

I've spent 40 years vaguely at odds with English cricket because of its lack of diversity. Now things are finally changing I'm no longer trusted because I'm a bald 64-year-old white middle-class bloke. From Yorkshire. No hope really.

Putting right the wrongs of cricket that span 50-60+ years is important and long overdue. However we ought not let club and ECB hierarchy off the hook for some of the short term decisions over specifically the last 25 years that have led to the game's invisibility within inner urban areas, schools workplaces and the culture of these islands. Sure belatedly they come up with ideas and lead on funding for diversity as Warwickshire is almost certainly ahead of most in this respect.

Let's not forget the hiding of the game behind a paywall in 2006. There are people still at the ECB and in positions at county clubs who remain culpable for this and plenty of other decisions besides
It's rather convenient for them to point the finger at an ageing, declining, out of touch membership and the volunteers - suits their agenda down to a tee that does. Playing increasingly greater proportions of the county championship in rugby season hardly helps either - you're not going to see much more than the die hards continue to hand over hard earned cash to follow that up close let alone tootle along to Portland Rd with it's wholly inadequate facilities for spectators to watch the women's teams in the freezing cold.

How about they put lots and lots of county mens and women's cricket matches on in mid-season and give diversity a bit of a chance. Just a thought like...

The fact it was on in August immediately following the pandemic partly explains the success in bringing in new attendees to the ground. The novelty factor is also surely an aspect to note. They don't seem so set on August going forwards mind, possibly because some of those factors don't exist any longer. Plus it now has to pay it's way so all the freebies will disappear and the brightly coloured shirts will look plain and boring again. The T20 Blast soon learnt that the ideal sweet spot for a chunk of season given over to slogball changed from year to year depending on weather and if there was a major football tournament that particular year.

Call me a cynic but this is all a smokescreen for a cabal of big time charlie county chief execs ransacking the rich history of the domestic game and remoulding it so it can exist going forwards without Worcestershire and Sussex and Derbyshire (or at least with the role of such entities severely diminished) thus paving the way for 8 or maybe 10 teams to share the spoils between

Strauss review by stealth. Designed by Edgbaston. It remains something which needs to be firmly resisted

He learns from this and wins us the QF against Hampshire with a brilliant spell

Both left at the end of 2018 in time for the 2019 seasons. Chris Wright signed for Leics in July 2018 Keith Barker's move to Hants wasn't confirmed until September 2018.

I get that but do feel that angle is overstated a tad. There are a couple of sides now in Div 1 with very little prospect of finishing 1st or getting relegated and a good number in Div 2 with nothing to play for already. It happens however many teams are in a league. You could ensure the intensity levels hold up by perhaps scheduling the local derby matches towards the end of the season. Warks 7th v Worcester 14th would still be a hard fought game. I think seeing the same counties year in year out gets pretty boring as does having to visit the same away venues. Used to be far better when in a 2 year cycle you got see all the counties play at your ground and only had to wait a year or two for trips to some of county crickets joys. It would massively help several counties increase their membership, profile etc... if they know they've got 2024's version of Brian Lara coming to play at their ground and 2025's version of Allan Donald. I'm frankly irritated we don't get to play at New Road once every two years, ditto Derby/Chesterfield, Northants, Colwyn Bay, Hove, Cheltenham and loads more

If test cricket is just a jolly up then county cricket should be allowed to be fun too - not reduced to the pressure of must win games to stay up and coaches unwilling to risk giving youngsters especially spinners a good run in the side. Think of how liberating T20 has been for young/unknown spinners. If T20 had relegation there's a realistic possibility we'd never have seen Jake Lintott