I agree that Ed could hardly have said that AD is a rubbish captain and nobody likes him. But he did seem to speak sincerely. As the great George Burns said: “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made.”

GerryShedd wrote:

Chief Executive says:

" Short term, respected journalist Brian Halford will step in to cover remaining County Championship and One Day Cup games, starting with the Essex review.
Long term, we’ve recruited an experienced sports Head of Media. He’s from Warwickshire, has good sporting instinct, journalistic knowledge, and a passion for red and white ball cricket with great ideas about how we produce timely, informative news for Members on cricket at every level of the Club. I’m excited about the fresh focus he will bring when he joins in October."

Brian is a safe pair of hands; and we await the announcement of the identity of the permanent replacement.

Well, here we are in October; and unless I have missed it, I've seen no announcement about the identity of the new Head of Media who is/was due to join the Club this month.

According to the Telegraph, the experiment with the Kookaburra ball in county cricket has been abandoned - it's the Dukes ball for all 14 games from now on.

They will never take to the field as a team; but Ed has been selected as captain of the PCA MVP team of the season:
https://edgbaston.com/news/ed-barnard-is-selected-as-the-captain-of-pca-team-of-the-season/

Yes, he had a busy summer.
He had some interesting things to say. Firstly, he said he was glad that the 14 match Championship season is being retained, though he did acknowledge that there may be quicker bowlers than him who take more out of themselves who struggle a bit more with the amount of cricket; and some of the juxtapositions of fixtures are problematic.
He spoke highly of Alex Davies as captain (sorry, guys, but he did!)
He also said that he would really like to play in The Hundred and was disappointed not to be picked for one of the teams. He saw this as a chance to play against some of the best players in the world and that it might open the door for him to get some overseas franchise opportunities. He did think, though, that it should be changed into a T20 competition.
He said that he still has nightmares about the last over of the Blast match against Somerset.
Plenty more; and he came across as a very sincere and likeable character.

Drawing a blank on this. Give us a clue on the player's nationality, please.

Ed Barnard is the speaker at the Cricket Society event at Edgbaston tomorrow afternoon. It will be interesting to hear what he says about cricketer workload, bearing in mind that he played all 14 four-day games plus 15 T20 and eight 50 over matches this year.

Support for the PCA view here:
https://sportsgazette.co.uk/county-crickets-crossroads-quantity-over-quality-chosen-by-ecb/
The writer's credibility is not enhanced when he mentions a player that he calls George Garrot.

Thanks for the quiz, Highveld. Keep them coming; but not too difficult, to be kind to dumb clucks like me.

Yes

I think the World Cup 50 came from Freddie Coleman in a match where another Warwickshire man scored a hundred.

I can't get the answer to question 6, though M J K Smith played cricket and rugby for England; and Martin Donnelly played cricket for New Zealand and rugby for England.

England played an ODI v New Zealand in 1973 at Swansea - no idea why.

Thanks for this.
I'll start the answers off by naming Geoff Humpage and Jim Troughton for question one - not sure about a third.
And I think David Hemp for question 4.

Latest BBC update:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/c80g988y892o

Article about Chris Woakes that makes the point expressed by several of us on here - he deserved better than the dismissive send-off that Rob Key gave him:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecricketdrop/p/bonus-the-cricket-drop-farewell-the?r=3becy7&utm_medium=ios

90th birthday interview with ex-Bear Bob Barber:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2025/10/01/bob-barber-interview-boycott/?WT.mc_id=e_DM697196&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_PrS_New&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_PrS_New20251002&utm_campaign=DM697196

Interesting story about Jacob Bethell here:
https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/how-joe-root-discovered-jacob-bethell-barbados-10282843/

The younger bowlers shouldn’t be short of advice, with “Pop” plus OH-D, Chris Rushworth and Keith Barker on hand.

The return of!
https://edgbaston.com/news/graeme-welch-to-join-warwickshire-as-new-bowling-coach/