I emailed Stuart Cain about the proposal to reduce the number of county championship games, here is his reply.

"Thank you for your email. We are supportive of the County Championship, but to date haven’t received any detail around the High Performance Review and potential proposals.

We should receive this information over the coming week and there are then a series of consultation sessions with all First Class Counties, the Professional Cricketer’s Association, broadcasters and fan groups. This will culminate in a final ECB proposal covering the entire High Performance Review – of which the domestic schedule is a part – around the 9th September.

With this in mind, we are announcing this morning an ‘Ask the CEO’ Member’s Forum which will take place during lunch on Tuesday 13th September (Day Two of the Somerset County Championship game). This will give us the opportunity to discuss in detail the proposals and take feedback. We are also arranging a Member’s Committee meeting for w/c 12th September to again secure the views of those nominated to represent the Membership.

These Member conversations, along with the views of the Director of Cricket, Head Coach and senior management within the Club will inform the view put to the Board and how the Chair of Warwickshire CCC will then vote.

Regarding your comments about an EGM, this is covered in the Club rules which are on the website ( https://edgbaston.com/club-rules/ ). I will also pick up your comments about the FCA with our Head of Finance, so thank you for raising.

I hope you can join us at the Forum on 13th September.

Take care.

Stuart"

Good that he responded and all very civil, but I took it as, we're voting yes to whatever the ECB proposes and the members can like it or lump it. Perhaps unduly cynical.

Yes I agree with that. Unlike some people I don't object to The Hundred as such. If that's the best short form competition to appeal to new cricket supporters let's go with it. But I don't think you can cut a chunk out of the season to play T20 and another for The Hundred. Either drop one completely or play both at the same time.

Anybody else signed this?

Thanks. I have signed.

Sad to see Olly go but good to hear he has his future sorted out. Given his injury problems it doesn't make much difference to the championship team but we are very light in 20/20 bowling.

Clearly Jonny Bairstow.

And 3 wickets in the 2nd innings. Someone should snap him up.

Didn't see the game but clearly disappointing result. We do seem poor at chasing down totals and I think other teams have sussed this out. Still The Blast is a funny old tournament and all the teams will lose a few. 3 out of four 4 ain't bad, as Meatloaf almost sang.

Think he's in the CC squad to play New Zealand (along with Dom Sibley) which is perhaps a sign we don't see him as a 20 over player.

Yes I agree with both sides of your comment. Shame Warwickshire and English cricket more generally can't put the same effort into developing domestic cricketers as they do into nicking young talent from other countries. No blame on Che of course, who has an English passport and is furthering his career

Good to take some wickets and doubly good that Nathan McAndrew got 4. Funnily enough I don't feel limiting their lead changes the match situation, we still need to bat for a couple of sessions to draw the game. Bit like last year's game at Old Trafford.

Yes I think lack of money was why we didn't join the Pakistani bowler chase. I have Warwickshire dead last in my county financial rankings (see below). Also signing Davies from Lancashire probably used up quite a bit of budget and left us rummaging through the bargain bin when it came to overseas four day players. And it's only one bad day, McAndrew may look like an inspired decision by the end of the season.

http://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2022/04/bentley-forbes-consulting-rankings-2020.html

Tayls79 wrote:

Yeah. It's hard to think much further than money to be honest. Weirdly, bowling is now our issue and especially if Stone and Woakes are missing. The rest of the attack is right arm and not express so a left arm quick would have been great - this was obvious from the end of last year. Shaheen Afridi was available and keen on the UK - but ot looks like we could never get near him.

BristolBear wrote:

On McAndrew I believe he arrived at Edgbaston on the second day of the Essex match. So in the country just under a week.

I thought he was supposed to be a bit quicker, bowl a heavy ball, get some bounce, a bit like Norwell. But we’ll see how he pans out.

What doesn’t change is that in terms of available players, no way do I believe that he was the best possible bowler the club could acquire for the overseas position. I listed the calibre of players in an earlier comment, so I’d love to know want Farbrace was doing when all those other bowlers were signing deals elsewhere.

Tayls79 wrote:

Yeah. It's hard to think much further than money to be honest. Weirdly, bowling is now our issue and especially if Stone and Woakes are missing. The rest of the attack is right arm and not express so a left arm quick would have been great - this was obvious from the end of last year. Shaheen Afridi was available and keen on the UK - but ot looks like we could never get near him.

BristolBear wrote:

On McAndrew I believe he arrived at Edgbaston on the second day of the Essex match. So in the country just under a week.

I thought he was supposed to be a bit quicker, bowl a heavy ball, get some bounce, a bit like Norwell. But we’ll see how he pans out.

What doesn’t change is that in terms of available players, no way do I believe that he was the best possible bowler the club could acquire for the overseas position. I listed the calibre of players in an earlier comment, so I’d love to know want Farbrace was doing when all those other bowlers were signing deals elsewhere.

I thought Miles was unlucky not to start against Essex. Might it be McAndrew v Brookes for the last place?

Definitely our day. Watched the last hour on the feed, Essex bowled well and the ball was swinging all the time. A good effort (plus a little lucky) to get to the close just two down. Hopefully batting gets easier tomorrow and we can build a decisive lead.

You'd have to be stupid to try and predict county cricket: so here goes.
Champo = 3rd
T20 = Winners
Player of the season = Danny Briggs
Breakthrough = Henry Brooks
Team for game 1 = Sibley, Yates, Mousley, Hain, Benjamin, Rhodes, Burgess, Briggs, Miles, Norwell, OHD

Understandable decision to dismiss first Giles and now Silverwood. Feel a bit sorry for both men though, some of the press have portrayed them as idiots but they have very good records at Warwickshire and Essex and Giles even managed to get a tune out of Lancashire. Plus England is a tough job, success for the one day side is "all down to Morgan" & the domestic structure for Test cricket is set up to fail.

If the link doesn't work I've just copied as text
http://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2022/01/warwickshire-2021-accounts.html

And you can - hopefully just copy that into a browser.

And I've done my annual review of the annual report (plus added ranting). http://sideoncricket.blogspot.com/2022/01/warwickshire-2021-accounts.html
Reabank