Reabank wrote:

Great result, made my day. Don't know who was responsible but (4 games in) looks like we made some really shrewd decisions over the winter. As for negative views of Warwickshire, seems to come with the territory - every time we've won the title in my life time it's been met with a mixture of backhanded compliments and downright whinging. Makes it all the sweeter when we come through.
I agree, there are always negative comments when we win anything, in 2004 we got a lot of comments because we won only 5 games. We did draw 11 but lost none and by July, it was obvious that a side who would go on to have a lowest score of 265 in the CC were not going to lose any games and during July we were so many points ahead of 2nd, that all we had to do was keep accumulating points. No other side had the nerve to declare too many behind and try to encourage us to set up a finish so what were we to do. In 1995, Mike Brearley said our pitches were green-tops prepared for our bowlers. If your first 3 bowlers are Donald, Small and Munton, you are going to win a few games and it doesn't explain how we played 2 spinners every game, any 2 from Smith, Davis and Giles. And in 2021 we got all the "They only won because it was a different format and Essex and Notts had better records" - Tough, all the counties knew the score from ball 1 and if they didn't play well enough to get in to the top tier and carry forward any points, then that is their hard luck. We have won more trophies during the modern era and if you take any block of a 5 year period going back to the mid-90's we are in the top 3 of trophy winners in EVERY period, I suppose the other counties think this is all a fluke as well. Happy Bank Holiday everyone.

Come on EB, stop slacking and remove yourself from 'Yer pit' and 'Seize the day'.

Love beating Hampshire after they gave Lancashire a MASSIVE helping hand in winning the title in 2011. A great win and losing play to the weather has made no difference just like the Kent game.

Please let us take this wicket as hearing Emily Windsor say 'Frew' and 'Fings' instead of 'Through' and 'Things' is driving me mad.

You can only think that Hampshire have managed to win games because of their bowling because as a lot of Hampshire fans will tell you, their batting looks poor.

Rushworth, what a signing, we know he won't get picked for England so should be running in during the CC games without playing in T20 and might not need to play in the RL cup, so he is ours for the season and he will take wickets. Mr reliable and so pleasing to watch.

I think we would have batted on regardless of whether Barnard was on 91* or not. I would prefer to bat on in that position, there are 2 ways of looking at it, I have seen sides close the innings earlier than they normally would because the ball is moving about and then come out to bowl and the ball does nothing. Batting on gives us the opportunity to make Hampshire have to bat longer to clear the deficit and might mean we don't have to try and get 110 in 10 overs if they got out for 250 and used up 85 overs in doing so. Either way it is a tough one for any captain but don't agree with the woman on the commentary who said declaring overnight was "brave captaincy", it has nothing to do with that, a captain has to do whatever it take to try and win the game.

In that case, Hampshire would have to get 280-300 and I cannot see them scoring that quickly.

Barnard, looking like a really good signing and not looking overawed by being in division 1.

This Hain/Barnard partnership is looking a good one and a decent rate. Holland/Dawson are very ordinary bowlers but you can bet that Abbas and Abbott will be a different challenge. A lead of 100+ tonight with a few wickets in hand would be a good day and then we will just have to hope we can get enough time left at the weekend to help us out.

Saturday, from what I have just seen, is the dodgy day and Sunday might see more play. Important tomorrow that we bat long and score at a good lick and get a good lead. If we could bat all day tomorrow, it might be that only Sunday gives us a chance to win.

This has turned out to be a good day. Well done us. This is 'Bearball', not 'Bazball'.

Glad to have broken that partnership but 186-8 is better for them than 137-7 and have we let another good opportunity to get a side out for less than 170, go again.

Looks like there could be interruptions on Fri/Sat but long range forecasts have been known to change as the time gets nearer. Hampshire will be ready for us after last season saw them going for the title and thanks to our last-gasp victory, they didn't even get runners-up and finished 4th. They looked totally lost and shocked by the whole saga.

That's the way Gerry, give it some of that Viking spirit.

At some point a lot of people who are still having to work in full-time employment, will have to have a good look at what they are paying for a membership and could decide with little cricket to watch and not knowing if it will rain at weekends, that enough is enough and just not bother with the game. I feel as though if I did give up my membership after 34 consecutive seasons, that I would just not bother with it any longer. A lot might feel like this, if the weather looks like it could give you a 50/50 chance of seeing any cricket, why would you bother to risk it if you had to pay at the gate. I can see about 20-25 days cricket a year and that just about justifies the price of membership but if the fixtures are messed about with and we are forced to endure 'The Hundread' as part of the season, then we could have a situation where the membership dwindles and on an on/off day due to weather, we could have as little as 50 people watching. As such, I think ALL games whatever format, would suffer. I only watch T20 because it is part of my membership and I still regard that awful name of Birmingham Bears, as Warwickshire but paying to come and watch without a membership and all the hassle of rushing from work on a Friday night and trying to get somewhere to park, would just make me feel, "What's the point...".

Why is this awful competition still referred to as 'The Hundred' and not 'The-elephant-in-the-room-that-has-to-have-free-tickets-given-away-to-get-people-to-watch-and-has-lost-almost-£60M-in-2-seasons-with-games-that-no-one-remembers-balls-up'. It does just roll off the tongue.

Why and how is Norwell injured? What has he done between the Hampshire game in Sept '22 till now, to get injured. It is like Rankin syndrome all over again, when Boyd would be unavailable at the start of a season whilst having not played during the Winter months.

ExiledBrummie wrote:

Strutters indeed, sending out bowlers to knock off the runs......but we were well beaten sadly.

It is a bit of a *** take to send out the bowlers to get the runs but glad we got Worrall out, that might shut him up for about 5 minutes. It might be too early but this shows me that we won't make a solid impact in the CC this season. Oh! well, I have saved on the petrol I would have used tomorrow.

If this Surrey side are the best in the country, then perhaps the CC is not that good. Take Roach out of the attack and they look very ordinary. Apart from plenty of dodgy decisions that went their way when we played them at The Oval last season, I do wonder how these strutters managed to win the title. We had the usual whooping and jumping about when they took wickets as we had in the Dernbach sides of old but they look nowt special but it doesn't look like us who will dislodge them. Poor bowling this morning, lower order batsmen who are throwing the bat, love 'length' bowling and cannot usually cope with yorkers but yet again as against Kent, we never saw any.