It's an interesting article. The Durham chap is clearly a bit odd - he also refers to county members as the lowest common denominator but Durham doesn't have any members. Later on in the article Richard Gould, current ECB chief executive and former chief executive of Surrey says the issue is more of counties moving away from their members and membership numbers dwindling as a result. It's an interesting point, the last set of filed accounts showed Surrey with 19,000 members, that's double the number in 2018. For other counties the numbers are either flat or have declined over the period.

Thanks Gerry
As ever, well written and fair. I'm a bit more pessimistic than you about the championship and wonder about our fast bowling depth. Batting and spin bowling looks to have more depth and more good prospects coming through than we have had for a while - challenge may be giving them a chance. Agree we seem to have a strong squad for The Blast, fingers crossed we can win a knock - out match or three.

Interesting and thanks for putting up. I've no inside knowledge but looking on I think the ECB under its new(ish) chairman is trying to be more consensual and saying to the counties what do you think. But the counties all think different things. Lancashire love the Hundred as it is and don't want to see it expanded. The medium sized counties would like to join an enlarged Hundred. The smaller counties don't care for The Hundred but like the £1.3m the ECB pays in return for them accepting it. The ECB likes The Hundred just fine but doesn't like the £1.3m it pays to every county.

Hello All
Hope you're wintering well. On my blog I have a review of the financial position of 17 of the 18 first class counties, which includes a financial stability league table. And Warwickshire are off the bottom. Link below.
https://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2024/02/bentley-forbes-consulting-rankings-2022.html

Top post - thanks very much.
Can anybody name the 13 Warwickshire players making their test debuts in the last 50 years? I certainly couldn't.
I'm not sure I agree that the stats indicate knee jerk changes to the test team are a constant feature of selection across the 50 years. The numbers of test debuts have come down quite sharply in recent decades. If you think of a team playing the first test in a new decade you wouldn't expect many of those players to still be playing at test level by the end of the decade so natural attrition will give you 7 or 8 debutants. Then you've got injuries especially to fast bowlers and selectors need to find room for good uncapped players who can improve a team. An art rather than a science but I think 19 debutants in a decade looks bit low.

Very good summing up UrsaMinor, calm authority captures the man & he'll be hard to replace. Does anybody know if there is a premium salary for captaining the county championship / 50 over side? Seems at the moment players are very fixed on playing T20 which I would guess is in the hope of picking up a deal for The Hundred which pays £30k / 50k even for fringe players . Once you have a gig in the Hundred there's the hope of being picked for one of the second tier overseas T20 competitions. Seems the incentives are askew.

Thanks Gerry

Good and very fair review. 7/10 out of 10 for the season seems about right to me.

Thanks to both sides but especially Northants for an excellent afternoon's cricket on what could have been the dullest of dull days. Thought the pitch was good, some pace, a bit of help for the seamers and I suspect a good spinner would have done well on day 4. We were lucky to beat the county stuck to the bottom of division 1 which says something about our weaknesses in top order batting (although a tough job in the CC) and a lack of depth in pace bowling once past the excellent OHD and Chris Rushworth.

Some thoughts about Robinson carrying on as coach. I'd say you have to judge him against what he is resourced for and I'd guess Warwickshire aim / budget to be a first division county that regularly qualifies for T20 finals day. Having won the CC & being in div 1 Robinson has significantly outperformed on the first objective. On the T20 he's slightly underperformed. Overall t20 performances have been about right as shown by finishing top of the group for the last two years but three quarter final defeats an obvious disappointment. But even there I think it's valid to wonder how much is down to the coach and how much just one of those things that will come right if the overall performances continue to be OK.

Highveld wrote:

Tazim definately bowls with a leg spinners action, and bowls a googly and top spinner as well as the lg break.

He's a good polite kid that seems to work hard on his game. He is definately a good prospect, but not sure if he's ready for regular county first team cricket now. He'd benefit from a full season of 4 day second team games and working with a good specialist spin coach. Today he was probably pushing the ball through to reduce the change of been hit.

Also, I think he's the first player from the Attock club to play List A cricket
Thanks Highveld; thought he was bowling legbreaks, but cricinfo says offspinner.

He's also predicting tough teats ahead. Not sure what we're getting into.

Feel really sorry for the players who had an excellent T20 season. I don't really have a problem with the format though especially as our one win came when we snuck into the quarters. I doubt we choked, short form cricket is very tight and a decent team can beat a good team fairly often. Maybe the 50 over competition this year.

Very impressed by how the team has responded to Sam Hain being injured. I thought we'd really struggle without him. Also, although he's not the most popular person on this forum, Davies does have a good record as captain - has he lost one yet? It will be interesting to see if we sign another bowler now Hassan is going - he'll leave a big gap but previous short term "emergency" signings haven't done well.

Thing is Stokes had apparently asked for flat fast pitches. I've watched a lot of cricket at Edgbaston and can only remember one quick pitch. A pitch that was 22 yards of bleurgh was predictable. I'd like to see someone senior in English cricket say, the groundsman's job is to produce a pitch that produces a good contest between bat and ball and its the job of the players and coaches to win games on those pitches.

Hasan just out. I'd declare now - quick runs are OK but no point pootling about.

Think I saw on the website Hassan was "targeting the Notts championship game.

Long piece in the Guardian about Moeen and his Dad, Munir.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/06/munir-ali-moeen-ali-birmingham-warwickshire-cricket

Quite interesting - some things I didn't know. My guess is Moeen will say no to an England test recall, he's been asked before and always gone through the motions of thinking about it before turning it down.

This in today's Guardian (Ali Martin)
He looked absolutely cherry ripe when I saw him bowl in pre-season but a random slip in wet conditions jarred his back and a disc is now impinging on a nerve. As such, he’s due to have an injection next week and see how it pulls up. Some days he feels good to go, others less so.

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.

Yeah I tend to agree. But don't think they will do that with Barnard on 91. One of the (many) things I'll never understand about professional cricketers.

Woakes for a bowler for me. Doesn't really matter which one as if we have good luck with injuries makes sense to rotate a bit during the April / May rush. Pretty sure they will pick Mousley; his batting at Taunton made good sense given where the game was and you can't say to players be positive but you're dropped if it goes wrong. Small point but a long term bug bear of mine, it would be good if the club did a weekly injury update - does anyone know when Norwell and Briggs might be available?