I think we all echo what the above poster's have said. It's horrible to lose a player when he has had a terrific season, even if by the end, he could just as well have not bothered to try, but he did. The pig-headed management will again come up with excuses if tackled about how they let a player go like Will. My abiding memory of him, was carrying around the CC trophy in 2021 but not showboating and was so humble rather than being big, showy and fist-pumping. He was happy to have got the job done and watch the rest of the team have their photo taken with the trophy and enjoy the moment. I cannot see how Robinson can carry on but if he does, then he had better hope that we have a good season in 2025 and that he doesn't leave worthy players out and come up with stupid team selections or other players will leave as has been pointed out already, Barnard and Burgess are 2 who might scratch their heads and decide they want to go elsewhere.

Any good South African player would be a step up and if you consider how many of them dropped out of their New Zealand tour recently to play T20 cricket, they are not exactly prioritising their Test careers.

Dennis Amiss and Eric Hollies perhaps.

Andy wrote:

Can't understand the overseas situation. Have we been massively unlucky? Maxwell was/is one of the worlds leading white ball cricketers, was so clearly the best available player to us at the time. Did we expect too much? Was he as bad as we remember? I'm not sure he was. Was fair to expect more though.

I dio
Re. Worrall. Hold on a sec, he played for Gloucestershire for 3 or 4 seasons so it's not like Surrey unearthed a gem out of nowhere. Only when he gained his British passport did Surrey pinch him. Good player though, clearly.

Jeets what a player, clearly. Crucially NZ schedule was quite light for a such a long period. We did lose him to international duty on a couple of occasions, 2012 he was gone for about 6 or 7 weeks as NZ toured India and 2017 he was part of NZ's Champions Trophy squad. He also turned NZ down on a couple of occasions so as not to jeopardise his Warwickshire contracts. He was a bit more highly rated by his country than you may think. And rightly so.

We've struggled with T20 overseas players for so long. Shoaib Malik in 2014 was good for us but even he missed Finals Day for the CPL (I think?). Even Jeets, as incredible as he was, used to get caned in that format in his 2 or 3 seasons with us.

I think the only way you can guarantee player availability (fitness permitting obviously) is to engage a domestic player from SA, Aus or NZ who is largely unheralded and not really on the radar of national team selection. Even then Cricket Australia are so difficult to work with, look at Kent and the Xavier Bartlett situation, all agreed for all formats, then on the eve of the season CA pulled him out and only let him play the Blast. Nightmare.

I didn't realise that Worral played for Gloucestershire but either way, Surrey still went for him despite him not being proven so the same example applies. Maxwell, if you consider his reputation, it is as a hard hitting and fast scoring batman who can bowl decent off-spin, well his off-spin was no better than decent and his batting was not a success from what we were probably expecting, 'The Big Show', he was not. I do not recall many games where Jeetan got caned and he did play a lot more than his "2 or 3 seasons". As for his fellow-countrymen, well if he was so highly rated, they would have played him a lot more than they did, not one performance did he get in the last Champions Trophy tournament that was played in the UK.

I cannot comment of the women's game as I do not know the in's and out's of how much the club has concentrated on that subject. As for the T20, I think many on here have commented on too much emphasis on this format as we still have struggled to get an overseas player who appears to be a specialist at T20 and can really make their mark, unfortunately, Hasan Ali despite the odd decent game in this format, does not fit the bill and Glenn Maxwell did not cover himself in too much glory when he played last season. I have always believed that you should build a good overall squad and you try to make CC cricket your strong suit and you should build your T20/50 overs team from that. The overseas player is a subject which annoys so many as we appear to have not tried hard enough and if a club of our size with a successful record of 16 trophies since 1989, better than most counties, cannot get players to come here then we need to ask about our process of how are the club looking for players. It can't be just money, Surrey picked up Worral, how, why and who. No one was aware of him and when he first appeared on the scene, no one had any idea about him or where he came from and yet here we are a few years later, asking the question of how we cannot manage to grab a player like that. Also, just what are we looking for in an overseas player, someone who was a good Test player who is now just looking to play a few seasons of county cricket, a player who hasn't yet hit the mark but is inexpensive or someone who is a proven Test performer who we are happy to get 8-10 performances out of in the CC. Also we need to ask ourselves how many different formats we can get from an overseas player and if we can not wear him out before the season is over. There are so many things to consider before we recruit a player, age, experience, longevity over a season and how many formats that player wants to commit to. In Jeetan Patel we got so lucky as he came here with no reputation and I for one asked, "Why him, his record is poor and an off-spinner, seriously". Boy, did I get that wrong and we were lucky that New Zealand did not appear to rate him so he never missed much cricket, wanting to play every game and racking-up 161 consecutive game in all formats. We will never get another like him, he was a one off, but I would love to know the clubs criteria for recruiting the overseas players.

Welcome Lickey_bear, Yes, very bad news and if that situation didn't affect Sam Hain, then nothing will. Looking at the batting stats, it doesn't look too bad from that point of view but not being able to win after setting Essex and Somerset, big totals, it does look like a case of strengthening the bowling. No point having bowling that has a side 5-6 down and cannot finish them off. We will never win many games if we cannot bowl side out twice and lots of bowlers at the same pace and over 30 will just get samey and allow any opposing batsman to score easily once they are 'In'. The bowling stats are the poorest I have seen for us in years and that must be a priority for next season.

Well done Mr Hain, very pleased for him, a typical innings from him. Very pleased he signed my picture of us both with the CC trophy in 2021, at the beginning of the season. It will go on my soon to be inherited piece of furniture in my dining room in a frame.

I think I am disappointed more in the CC with our lack of penetration once 5-6 wickets go down (263-6 in the current game) and certain batting collapses have been poor. But, bonus points can be misleading as you get the same for bowling a side out in 110 overs for 200 as you would bowling a side out for 400 in 110 overs so perhaps there is a lopsided nature when you look at the table of bonus points. Apart form Essex at home and Surrey away, we haven't been really dominated by many counties so I am optimistic about the future if we can get some good new players into the side including a good overseas player. The one-day form isn't that much of a worry apart from knock-out games. 16 wins to 9 defeats isn't a stunning return but we do appear to qualify early in the limited overs format and losing players maybe7,8,9 of them does not help which might explain Glouc/Glam winning trophies with hardly any of their players missing. I think we will continue to be competitive in one-day cups and hopefully can get through the knock-out stages so I am more upbeat there but we have been a side who usually play good CC crickets and as long as we get good recruits, I am not as pessimistic as I could be if I look at the overall picture. The thing that does worry me is Robinson, his strange team selection and the fact that he hasn't always faced-up to things. If he goes, I will feel more optimistic about next season. I doubt many on here want him to stay.

Was going to watch the You Tube stream but the commentator (No idea who he is, sounds Southern) has the most irritating way of talking, a bit like a pre-teen schoolboy, 'Fink' instead of 'Think' and 'Wiv' instead of 'With', how standards have dropped, can't imagine John Arlott, Peter West, CMJ or Richie Benaud getting a job if they sounded like that. Now the female is at it, 'Anuvver', I give up.

358-6, this could still go spectacularly wrong for us especially if Notts get a big score and our batting is staring down 450+. Lancashire might not get a 24 points win but we might not get a batting point so we shouldn't be thinking that we are out of it yet. If points are level, we have only won 1 game so still all to play for.

It was the Worcestershire chair Fanos Hira, a chartered accountant who looked at the ECB account books and said hidden costs (ECB core staff members working on The Hundred) were not declared. Also the so-called profit, did not take into account, the £24.7M 'dividend' paid to the counties and the MCC. Whether or not the ECB will manage to pull back this money is all speculation but all this info hardly points to the success that we have been told about. I would think that a qualified chartered accountant who was given access to the ECB accounts should be someone who DOES know what they are talking about.

And then someone from the ECB will wonder where the next batch of Test players are coming from, they never think about the good of the whole game. They will tell us about all the money that certain competitions are making and how 'Grass Roots' cricket will benefit but never think about kids who watch the awful Hundread, they do not want to sit and watch CC cricket at this time of year because they are at school or they will not want to sit and freeze or watch the rain come down, hardly an incentive to provide the next Root/Anderson. We are getting mixed messages though about this so-called dominating Summer format, all the figures appear to point to it losing money so why prop it up if it isn't making money, George Dobell suggests it's losing money and didn't someone from Worcestershire (Chairman?) actually produce a set of figures to say the same.

Yes, OHD's potential is there but he hasn't had the partners to stick with him when he needs them most, they let him down and leave him stranded when a ton is there for the taking, something else to put right for next season.

LeicesterExile wrote:

UrsaMinor wrote:

Not to mention Birmingham boy Andrew Symonds.
I'm loving the fact that we have a thread started about our next game that has filled three pages before the squad is even announced! The randomness could be a metaphor for our whole season.

And they say women can talk................hey hey
Yes, but we talk about important matters like cricket.

Should imagine he would be captain in any cricket team and you can just guess at all the meetings, all the other team members, "Bloody Albert, I mean, he is a decent bloke but these meetings, I mean, can anyone understand a word he is on about and when he gets his pen and paper out and tries to explain what is on his mind, I am just lost. Oh! And I wish he'd get his flippin' hair cut, he shows us up in the team photos".

Very surprised that they got any play in at all but I would be a bit miffed as a Somerset supporter as stronger teams usually prevail better in longer games whereas a short game can even things up a bit. Surprised at Somerset's slow batting early on, 69 runs from 64 balls from the first 3 batsmen. Hampshire could probably finish 2nd in the CC which will at least stop Somerset from finishing 2nd in all competitions like they did in 2010.

Best chance of survival is to have Davies in who can at least score runs, playing in his normal position. Benjamin has no place in any side.

Not sure what happens if they cannot play this week with CC fixtures starting on Thursday.

Talk about 'Soggiest of Squibs', fancy holding the 50 over final on a Sunday, it it's held over till tomorrow, how many fans will have booked the day off work if that is the case. Might have got it finished yesterday, at least having it over the weekend, it gives you a chance. Weather looks poor all week so that might mean we can save the fingernail biting until next season, we shall see.

And there was me thinking you were a nipper, Gerry. I would love to think that somewhere there is film of this final but from what I heard, ITV in the Midlands (Probably elsewhere) showed the final, not sure if it was filmed and because Warwickshire needed the grand sum of 5 runs per over, the ITV Midlands idiots, chose to leave the game as they assumed that a team could not possibly score at such an alarming rate so anyone who was a Bear, had to turn on the radio and listen. Quite unbelievable. Alan Smith scored 39 out of the 60 that he and Amiss put on to win. I have a programme and ticket from the game that I got on e-bay for £8, bargain.