mad
Member
Several Bears are overseas this winter a few we are aware of so far;
Jordan Bulpitt is over in Melbourne already and was selected for Kingston Hawthorn's two day fixture yesterday in the Victoria Premier League but unfortunately the entire round was rained off.
Ethan Brookes has also arrived in Melbourne to join up with Prahran CC
Rob Yates is heading over to Perth to play for Bayswater-Morley. They've had two rounds of
50-over matches already and switch to two day matches at the end of October. Henry Brookes spent a few months there the winter prior to Covid. Will Rhodes had two winters with Willetton just as he signed for Warwickshire from Yorkshire and before he took on the captaincy
The WACA Premier League is quite nice to follow as due to the time difference it's on in the mornings until about 11am on Saturdays/Sundays whereas the other grade cricket comps are all overnight.
George Garrett is heading over to Brisbane to play for Easts Redlands which is Marnus Labuschagne's club. The Queensland Grade cricket season begins a bit earlier in the year so they've played lots of T20 since August plus three 50-over games already and just completed their first 2-day match beating Toombul.
I know several other youngsters are over there or in South Africa so will keep an eye out for their performances
https://www.lords.org/lords/news-stories/mcc-world-cricket-committee-renews-calls-to-speed
Such measures could include the use of a countdown clock between overs and the on-going assessment of the DRS process, to ensure players and umpires remain vigilant on moving the game forward
Penalty runs also
Long overdue some of this. Days 1&2 of the India test over rates were outrageous
Would this be trialled at a county match I wonder?
Since there's a big gap now until the next game how about any recommendations for good reads on county cricket especially championship cricket.
Simon Chalke's Summers Crown from several years ago is very good
Here's another one which was reviewed earlier this summer I've not got round to reading yet
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/cricket/amateur-cricket/cricket-paul-edwards-30-years-24431674
Since there's a big gap now until the next game how about any recommendations for good reads on county cricket especially championship cricket.
Stephen Chalke's Summers Crown from several years ago is very good
Here's another one which was reviewed earlier this summer I've not got round to reading yet
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/cricket/amateur-cricket/cricket-paul-edwards-30-years-24431674
Warwickshire under 18's take on Cricket Wales at Moseley CC in their third 3 day championship match - Tuesday August 9th to Thursday August 10th. This is following their defeat to Gloucestershire at Portland Rd a fortnight ago and last week's defeat away to Northants
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/catastrophe-feared-40c-death-valley-27485470
In view of impending 'death valley heatwave' conditions I wonder if there are contingencies in place to respond to extreme temperatures next Tuesday when folks are advised not to be outside. From player, staff and spectator duty of care surely there needs to be thought given to altering the hours of play or postponing the start of this next round of fixtures if/and it's a big if the heat is as bad as they fear? With football they could bring kick off times forward to 11am or something is the same possible for cricket? Are we looking at 9.30am starts and a cut of of 2pm and an extra day (Friday) to complete the overs?
Suppose the easiest thing would be put each fixture back to a Wednesday start instead of Tuesday.
Leicestershires game starts Wednesday next week already. Risk then is there'll be interruptions due to the other sort of weather we're more used to here
Worcestershire U18 Boys v Warwickshire U18 Boys 11am start at Old Hill CC today
50 over match. They beat Staffordshire in the previous round with a century plus 2-6 by Hamza Shaikh
https://ecbu18.play-cricket.com/website/cup/56885
Bit of a preview of it on Worcestershire's website too
https://wccc.co.uk/edavalath-and-home-back-as-academy-take-on-local-rivals-in-ecb-county-cup/
Very intersting line up today
https://live.nvplay.com/ecb/#m8b923f7b-4f9f-4806-8feb-30e183c48e09
Dan Mousely off to a flier
Isaac Mohammed who is 13 and highly regarded relative of Moeen I've not seen him yet but a couple of the lads at Moseley a few weeks back were raving about him. Moeen actually spoke a bit about him with Aggers on TMS during tea at the test yesterday. Also Kobi Herft who when I spoke to a couple of Lichfield players on Saturday they reckon he's different class. 18 year old Aussie kid playing for West Bromwich Dartmouth
No Woakes yet though he was on about playing some 2nds cricket soonish
Monday 16th May 2.30pm Glamorgan home
Wednesday 18th May 11am Gloucestershire home
Thursday 19th May 1pm Worcestershire away (Barnt Green)
Hoping to get to 1 or 2 of these matches with 4 more home games to come before the end of the month
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
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
Not often I agree with this chap but he is spot on here. As members of county clubs there is much work to do to see off the wreckers threatening the game we love. I demand my county secures for me the bi-annual visit to watch my county club play first class cricket at New Road and Grace Road and Hove (plus occasional visits to Colwyn Bay and Chesterfield) and in striving for this opposes any move towards a 12 team premier league.
A return to 1 County Championship of 18 teams must be a priority!!!
29 March 2022 Simon Heffer
The ECB has failed in its duty to protect first-class cricket, so why is Tom Harrison still in post?
Perhaps I am being more than usually obtuse, but isn’t the most surprising thing about the debacle of England’s Test cricketers in the West Indies the fact that anyone is surprised by it?
Some of us never bought into the idea that the three Tests in the Caribbean would be a stroll compared with the savage route-march to humiliation that was the tour to Australia that preceded it. The same fundamentals that contributed to that shambles remained in place for this one: a demoralised team insufficiently skilled in playing serious cricket, and exploited by its employers in playing the unmemorable, rubbish short-form games that have debauched the very idea of what cricket is. Add to that what must politely be called an eccentric selection policy, with the team’s two greatest bowlers playing golf at home while English cricket became yet more ridiculous, and the recipe for catastrophe was complete.
Most of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s panjandrums have already had their P45s. It remains inexplicable why Tom Harrison, the Chief Executive, has not had his. It would be mildly uplifting if, as in one of those excellent films about Bomber Command, Mr Harrison was like the handlebar-moustached pilot who ensures the plane crashes away from a centre of population after the rest of the crew has jumped out. Sadly, one fears he lingers for other reasons, perhaps to seek to engineer some sort of continuity from the pitiful regime over which he has presided. Since the ECB needs the most radical change in outlook and strategy imaginable, the sooner Mr Harrison is on his bike the better.
And talking of change, there have been almost universal calls for Joe Root to give up the captaincy. He is the leading English batsman of his generation, and fit to be compared with any of the country’s greats in living memory. He has a poor recent record as captain; he has lacked imagination; and if complicit in the exclusion of Broad and Anderson, he is a fool to boot. He probably will lose the captaincy, and a case can be made that he would deserve to. But it would leave an ugly taste in the mouth that he was being scapegoated for the failings and misjudgments of others. May he remain in the side for years and score many more centuries and double centuries; England needs him, and he does not deserve to be humiliated. He has done his best with the miserable resources put at his disposal.
One is tempted to say we can’t go on like this; but one says it every time a fiasco occurs, and we do go on like this; and the fiascos become worse and worse until they reach a preposterous level of absurdity, which is rather what happened in Grenada last weekend.
Nothing has changed. The fixture programme that is about to start has first-class cricket – the proving ground for the Test team – consigned to the usually poor conditions of the beginning and the end of the season. High season is filled with white-ball cricket that helps our players develop appalling techniques that makes them, especially the batsmen, play such rank Test cricket. It would seem the ECB regards first-class county cricket as an obstacle to its money-making activities and therefore as incidental to its main strategies. It has never tried to market it as a viable entertainment. That is what has to stop.
Sadly, there is no sign the ECB has grasped what needs to be done, never mind being prepared to do it. One shudders at rumours that one proposal which could be put to Sir Andrew Strauss’s performance review is a ‘Premier League’ of 12 counties, with a second division of just six. The main reason advanced for this is that it would mean fewer first-class matches and more time to ‘prepare’.
Our cricketers play too little first-class cricket, not too much. The best preparation, all evidence suggests, is done in the middle or on the field. Those who want to cut the fixture lists argue that relatively few first-class matches are played in countries such as Australia, and it doesn’t do their cricketers any harm. But this is not Australia; we have a different climate and geology; above all we have nothing like the sub-structure that underpins Australian cricketers’ development and performance, their commitment and their idea of competitiveness. What the last few years have shown is that our players need to play more first-class cricket. Look at this winter’s abominable performances if you doubt that contention.
Forgotten in all this is the cricketing public. Professional cricket exists in England because people pay to go to see it. The return on the investment the average county member gets these days compared with in the 1970s is dismal; a handful of first-class fixtures, many of which end in just three days because of the conditions in which they are played; teams bereft of Test players, for whom rest is deemed a superior form of preparation than actually playing; and an increasingly low standard of cricket because of the increasing difficulty in finding promising young players who wish to make the game their career, thanks to the near-death of state school cricket. Have a second division of six Cinderella clubs staffed by nonentities and they will rapidly start going out of business. Cut the first-class fixture lists further and membership figures will decline further: no one wants an unrelenting diet of rubbish. If you lose what remains of county cricket’s public, you will also erode the base of those prepared to pay through the nose to watch Test cricket.
The counties – six of whom, I repeat, will be lucky to survive other than as weekend and evening slogfest circuses – need to wake up and take the initiative. For too long they have been manipulated by the ECB in return for being bribed with money, mainly from television rights, that they have done little or nothing to help earn. Now they are being promised a transfer system (which will break what remains of many local loyalties) and other gimmicks to keep them silent.
The committees who run the counties need to realise that an existentialist threat to some of them will, in the end, provide a threat to them all, and to the future of Test cricket. They need to start asking whether they believe in first-class cricket; and if the answer is yes, they must be prepared to mount a full-scale peasants’ revolt to provide a more credible alternative.
The counties (and MCC, which is so much the obedient creature of the ECB that it is becoming a laughing stock and a disgrace) must remind themselves of the historic responsibility they have for our great game, and for securing its future. That future will be one of a diminishing spectacle of increasingly trivial cricket unless they act now to save, and grow, the red-ball game. The alternative is for county cricket to sign its own death warrant.