Andy wrote:
The numbers would suggest the batters have batted well this comp, most strike rates there look good.

speaking of opening partnerships, by the way, the more they complement each other's styles the better they tend to be and a combination of left/right hand, taller/shorter batsman, aggressive/accumulative style and front foot/back foot player, if you can tick all of those boxes you have it perfectly IMO. IMO, Latham and Davies worked so well together as they tick 3 of them. the left/right is particularly useful as they pick up cheap boundaries when bowlers don't quite adjust their lines when they change strike, but taller/shorter and front foot/back foot can be similarly useful in bowlers not adjusting their lengths. left/right is also sneakily useful in continually forcing fielding changes and ultimately putting more pressure on them to get overs in before the cut-off which could pay dividends at the end with rushed overs or extra fielder in the circle.

the above is why I'd have Barnard opening as he's much more a threat than Davies on the front foot and driving down the ground and has played the anchor role to a tee in 50ov cricket, I think he and Davies complement each other well. But with Bethell being left handed and the golden-child elect I'm guessing he will be the opener (personally i'd have him at 5 because he is by far our best bullier of spin and really the only player we have who looks like he can take spinners down for 24 off an over at will when he's on form)

personally my choice for the QF would be

Barnard to replace Latham as the 'anchor' opener
Davies usual role
Hain/Mousley flexible to come in replacing either Barnard/Davies so if the designated quick-scorer gets out early Mousley comes in and if the anchor gets out Hain comes in for him. I personally think Mousley bats too high at 3 if the openers start well, if they do get a start we need to give Hain max time at the crease and shift him above Mousley in the order IMO. IMO we should and teams in general should be far less dogmatic and far more flexible in terms of batting orders but with Hain this season, having your best batsman at 4 and fairly consistently only having 10 overs to work with seems counter-intuitive to me.
Bethell
Garton
Booth
Lintott
Briggs
Taz Ali
Gleeson

Garton is obviously very high at 6 there (depending on circumstances i might even say bring Lintott in earlier than him and ask Lintott to play partner to whichever batsman is left in, and leave Garton to come in last c4 overs and slog for those short boundaries) but fitting Taz Ali in whilst still having 3 genuine seam options (and not Barnard as one of them) means something has to be sacrificed, and Booth and Lintott are coming into the game in very good touch with the bat and make up for that a little. Still its bowling-heavy and a bit batting-light but that's my preference.

what I suspect will happen is they will play Bethell as opener and he will swing himself off his feet trying to over-hit everything and Kai Smith will play, and I don't know if they will play Lintott or another seamer.

and I very much doubt they will play Taz Ali, I'd love to see him in there as an x-factor wicket taking option, not even necessary for him to bowl all 4 with the range of options we have in that lineup (3.5 seam 4 spin)

Tayls79 wrote:

We've consistently seen a need for faster bowlers (ie Garton could be useful), a left armer (Garton) and a solid number eight bat (Garton again) so think there was a need for him and would have been good to convert him to CC. Does the club want him to? Does he not fancy it? Or will he just disintegrate if he has to bowl more than four overs? I genuinely don't know. I think the ships sailed now though with Barker, seemingly only here to play CC, unless Garton has a year and a half timeline on being red ball ready? Also don't think they're on massive money for 14 blast games.

with his age, injury record, and considerable bulk/size, I'd be fairly certain he would rather not risk his body (and franchise money) with the grind of long-form cricket. AFAIK he hasn't played any in years.

Andy wrote:

Great post ITE7376, so many good points. The numbers would suggest the batters have batted well this comp, most strike rates there look good.

cheers. from a pure stats perspective, Ed Barnard getting well over 300 at over SR160 is probably the most impressive single achievement for me. Especially when you consider that the top 4 ahead of him all faced an awful lot of balls, to get that gross weight of runs was very impressive as it wasn't like he was continually coming in overs 4-10, quite the opposite. When he did come in relatively early after an early run of wickets it seemed like he got a good contribution every time, and the season SR speaks eloquently of the success of his shorter cameo innings and his 'ability to score quickly from ball one'. Very good consistency, when he was coming in at a position in the lineup where consistency is difficult. Again those factors being as prized as they are (apparently) in franchise recruitment I'm slightly surprised he didn't get picked up, as the 'specialist finisher' does seem to be a role they actively recruit for.

Our ex-Bear Ethan Brookes had a near-identical season with the bat in both gross runs and SR and is a more successful T20 bowler than Barney on recent form as well as a brilliant fielder and, again, both his stats and the way they fit with franchise wishlists make it surprising to me nobody picked him up. I honestly question the quality of the scouting in Brookes's case as although (IIRC) his bowling was expensive this year, he does take wickets and is a useful no6 bowling option/very useful no7 option. I do strongly suspect that the scouting/recruitment will catch up with Brookes sooner than later and wouldn't be at all surprised if he is playing Big Bash within another year or two

Highveld wrote:

The above was a "party political broadcast" from the "Alex Davies fan Club", membership 2, Alex Davies & ITE7376.

Remembering the infamous "Jean" from the previous boad, perhaps they are the3 same person?

your comments about Davies are now saying far more about you than they are rationally saying about him.

as a different context, across 18 counties there were 60 top 5 batsmen. Davies was 22nd in the scoring. in the top 3rd, pretty impressive stuff. imagine how many bad dismissals the 48 below him must have had

Highveld wrote:

Tom Latham scored a very similar number of runs, at a similar strike rate, without the stupid dismissals, but some here claimed he was too slow.
I know who most people would prefer to haver in the side.

Latham's strike rate was greatly increased by a single innings (the ton, plus another against Notts), though, Davies's was consistent across most of his innings. The comments on here about him scoring slowly were, firstly, made before the season, secondly, based on a significant sample size across his T20 career, and thirdly, born out in 12 out of 14 of his innings last season.

Without the 2 innings as outliers, and they very much were outliers, he'd have been right back to his career strike rate in the mid-130s

As for 'without the stupid dismissals'?, they were both dismissed 14/14 innings, and I recall plenty of unnecessary or poor shots from Latham getting him dismissed. At this point it looks like you're just inventing reasons to shout about Davies I'm afraid because Latham played his fair share of shockers too.

I'd also suggest you are misunderstanding somewhat the role Davies has been given/given himself. Latham was the 'play through the innings' opener and Davies the quick scoring one. Same as Mousley's role was clearly to come in and score quickly (his strike rate went up about 20 from last year) and hain's, as ever, was to bat through. Getting out earlier is somewhat built into Davies's role the same way it was for Neil Carter. Teams nowadays don't have batsmen each coming in hoping to anchor the innings and get a NO from wherever they are in the order. They have players for different roles. Even given that, I'd personally like to have seen Davies kick on past 50 much more often in his time with us, but you aren't looking at the stats through the right lens in my opinion.

given his role as quick scorer in my opinion, with the risk taking that implies, Davies getting nearly 400 runs is a good/very good gross total matched with SR.

as for 'most people' would prefer Latham, well for one thing it never fails to amuse seeing people's assumption of the universality of their own viewpoint but that aside, there is a perfectly reasonable standpoint saying they actually complemented each other beautifully, and I think formed the highest-scoring opening partnership in the whole competition.

it may be a scandalous idea but- they don't have to be either/or, and you can praise both at the same time, or one of them without deriding the other. Opening partnerships can work badly or well, we had a partnership scoring 800 between them and you're slagging the guy who got half the runs? ah well.

Tayls79 wrote:

I don't want to interrupt a little debate, but the Birmingham / Warwickshire thing and two potential reasons behind it...

i) Wasn't it partly done as per a package of things to curry favour with Birmingham Council when they effectively paid for the ground works? and partly ii) as a positioning exercise ahead what became the 100? 'Look here ECB, we're already a city-based franchise, we can just take one franchise on already, we're ready now.'

Either way, I don't think it was ever designed to disenfranchise or enfranchise one set of supporters. Just political. I never took any notice, but I suppose I'm from Moseley so I wouldn't mind.
.

exactly my point earlier, it was BCC's pound of flesh for the loan for the new stand. no rebranding, no new stand, and likely no test status in the long term.

for all the abuse Davies gets 393 runs at SR151 is a good return. again there are multiple players in the 100 with inferior output this year.

for context, there are 27 players who have scored over 350, and only 14 of them have scored at 150 or above.

BosworthBear wrote:

Yep we’re getting really great crowds since we reverted to Birmingham Bears and now Bears.

feel free to show how the attendance dropped as a result of the change while you're building your strawman

to say the least I think you over-estimate the supposed PR and marketing benefits of a reversion back to Warwickshire, but I'm sure the proof will be in the pudding when attendances skyrocket from all the fans newly engaged by the excitement of a name change and we're suddenly pushing 20,000 a game because of their intense connection to the concept of Warwickshire.

ITE7376 wrote:

Andy wrote:

Ross Whiteley.

2010, we won the CB40, 2012 we lost, absolutely gut wrenching defeat.

yeah I was thinking of the Hants connection beating us t20 QF in 2010 and CB40 final a couple of years later

I've mangled Ross Whiteley and Alex Wakely before. which is strange as I quite liked Wakely for some reason, he was like my pet non-WCCC player. and he was the polar opposite as a cricketer too, clever manipulator and good stroke player, ran well between the wickets, Northants captain when he was still pretty young, not some lumbering backwards caveman dot ball eating slogger like Whiteley

paulbear wrote:

2010 was annoying on the basis that as Neil Carter always said, "If you finish top of your group, you should go to T20 finals day", just like Yorkshire and Worcestershire have done in this year's Metro Bank but we yet again finished top of our group, won 11, lost 4 and Hampshire scraped through buy 0.2 of a run after losing half their games and by the time they won the final, their record was won 11, lost 8 and we had won 11, lost 5, hardly seems fair that you should saunter through but have your hard work ruined by one game. Yes, the 2012 final also haunts me. Bell who had been superb, hit a full-toss straight to a fielder on the boundary. Carter should never have gone out to bat before Patel on the basis that Jeetan had plenty of innings recently unlike Carter who was rusty and hadn't batted that much recently, Blackwell (For a big hitter) farted about too much and I sat there thinking, "Carter, Just get something on it and run or crack it through the infield". He did neither. Despite winning the title that season, the season was ruined as it was the very last game of the season which was unusual.

2010 is still the best T20 team we have ever put out due to the brilliantly balanced bowling attack of Carter, Woakes, Barker, Tahir, Botha and Piolet. that attack was superb, we were the best team in the country that year and would have beat anyone on virtually any other day because of it

on the CB40 final Yeah, i thought Bell would have been kicking himself that he didn't go on to win that game, and then for two players as experienced as Carter and Blackwell to mess up a relatively straightforward finish was galling

paulbear wrote:

There was a period from the mid 1980's until the mid 1990's when it was almost impossible for Warwickshire to lose to Hampshire in the CC but I doubt that every time we played them, we thought it would be a nailed-on win, at some point it had to stop. From 1981 up until the Natwest semi-final in 1989, we had not beaten Worcestershire in ANY competition. I doubt before that semi-final being played at a packed Edgbaston (Wouldn't have been full if it was so obvious that Worcestershire would win) that it was looked on as an obvious win for our neighbours. At some point, a run of good results has to stop, it won't continue indefinitely so all the 'They Always Do' isn't really a good reason for saying we would lose to them had we have played them yesterday.

ha i was being slightly facetious, I'm scarred by 2010 and the CB40 final

paulbear wrote:

I always hated being called Birmingham Bears but Bears is better and I think eventually we will be called Warwickshire Bears which isn't too bad. As for the pavilion, it isn't really that popular, massively cold at times (It has been called the 'Icebox' for a while), which is why so many people (Mostly members), sit at the opposite end. It is functional but I would have preferred something a bit more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. When we won the title in 2021, there were not many in there and 80% of people were over the other side.

I much prefer the atmosphere in the Wyatt. I find the fans to be more knowledgeable in there too, myself.

the point still stands, no Big New Stand = likely no test status or finals day and all that come with them

paulbear wrote:

I don't agree that Hampshire would have beaten us, nothing is so obvious that you can just call out a result in a game that never happened.

But they always do!!! ha. one CB40 final one 50ov quarter final and now 3 T20 qFs I think? I will always hate James Vince. he ruined my 2010 fantasy year.

and I think Payne got picked because he was a part of Gloucestershire's T20 side last year.

a tad unfair to Payne, he's 4th all time in T20 blast wickets, excellent strike rate (under 17), swings it early and bowls very well at the death, and a left armer, and tall to boot. ticks nearly every box

i totally take your other points and examples though and agree sometimes someone gets a rep- Alex fvcking donkey-slogger 'Mr Dot Ball and an occasional six' Whiteley being the best example- for very isolated examples of their 'talents'

BosworthBear wrote:

Enjoying the posts!

Must confess I’m much more concerned about the Surrey match than the T20 quarterfinal.

Possibly because we are still playing under that Bears nonsense!

seriously, what difference does it make? Warwickshire Bears, Birmingham Bears, The Bears, nobody got the wrong idea, nobody was confused that it wasn't the same club all along. Same players, same ground, what's the big deal?

I'm sure you know enough to know there was a very concrete reason the name was changed in the first place, and the lovely Big New Stand and pavilion you probably sit in every game is the result of it- and we wouldn't have that pavilion and big new stand without BCC getting their pound of flesh in return, which was that the name had to include 'Birmingham', I imagine you're aware of this? you didn't like the change to Birmingham Bears? should we have stuck with that ancient, embarassing old stand whilst all the other test grounds modernised and left us behind, and maybe lost our test status, didn't become the default home for Finals Day and all the income that comes to the club from those things? If they had changed to the Birmingham Superchargers I could understand it but for goodness sake, we are the Bears. 'come on you Bears', 'yooooooooooo Be-ears'.

First people were up in arms when we became 'Birmingham Bears', now they take away the 'Birmingham' that annoyed so many people and there's still whining about it. I couldn't GAF about team names I just want to watch cricket.

Do you actually like watching cricket? Do you like the players that you watch every week in the CC? You see club hero Sam Hain, maybe with a chance to finally win a T20 trophy after a decade with us carrying the t20 team on his back, but now if we win his success and that of his teammates, many of whom you watch in the CC, would mean nothing to you, just because they are called 'The Bears'?

Cricket fans must be the only sporting demographic I have ever encountered who actively seek reasons not to watch their own sport.

It's a shame that once Smith does mature he will be off to play franchise cricket and we will have to find another one.

don't be too sure- remember the selection criteria for franchise cricket, certainly the 100, seems to be a little unpredictable. certainly, the best-performing players in terms of gross run output don't always get selected. I've been somewhat 'sensitive' over this for some time due to my girlish fanboying over Sam Hain. EG in the big bash, the likes of Alex fking Whiteley got picked, you'd have say Laurie Evans or Kohler-Cadmore where Hain probably scored 1-200 more runs over a 3 year period but they were ahead of him in the Q.

Look at the 100 now, you've got the likes of Louis Kimber, Max Holden, McKinley, they're nowhere near Hain in runs scored but they do 'hit a long ball' and 'have the ability to score from ball 1' to coin the popular cliches which seem to heavily influence selection criteria (also, batters who bowl part-time spin are a major selection criterion, the likes of Coles Mousley Kellerman Rehan Ahmed)

obviously the sweet spot selfishly is for us to develop players who are very good, but not quite good enough for England and preferably without the cosmetic criteria that define franchise selection (hitting sixes), and on current experience Kai's face doesn't quite fit in that sense, I don't think he'll ever be a guy with a massive % of sixes and as a wkt-batter he would be competing against lots of that type for a franchise place. so there is a hope for me that he can kick on and develop and still not be stolen away from us

He seems to have been around a long time. Its almost as though he's 'evergreen'

GerryShedd wrote:

He's signed a contract extension:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/c5ypj4wjkz7o

from what I have seen he has been hit to all parts in the 100