That's One for The Family Album

Following Warwickshire this season has had as many ups and downs as my day’s walking in the Peak District last Saturday.  Much like that Saturday, the ups are spectacular and memorable and the downs - whilst dispiriting at the time – are soon forgotten.  In the Championship colossal victories against Somerset, Worcester (twice J) and Notts have been punctuated by humbling defeats at the hands of Durham (twice) and Lancashire.  In the T20, two good away wins were followed by posting our lowest ever total against Northants at Edgbaston.  In the 4 day game, much like last year, there looks to be very little danger that we’ll be involved in many draws this Summer.  With Somerset looking like they are getting their act together and our recent conquerors  Durham and Lancashire both looking strong, my early prediction is we will do battle with Notts for a fourth place finish in Division One.  This will be a marked improvement from last year’s flirtation with relegation and a good platform for next season.  I’m not writing our challenge off completely… anyone who knows me will testify that it only takes one good win to bring out my optimistic tendencies.  I am very happy to see Jeetan Patel in for the T20 (he turned in some match winning performances a couple of years back) but the lack of a top quality spin bowler in the Championship is a big miss – if only we’d held on to Imran Tahir but he does change his club (and country) more often as The Sugarbabes line- up (struggling for similes today).

My own Cricket viewing and blogging has been badly disrupted by my other past time (most of you call it a job).  Working for a North East company, I should have been able to manipulate my diary to take in the away games at Durham and Yorkshire but unfortunately I need to be wherever the world of Gentlemen’s casual fashion dictates.  I did manage to get to take my seat for the disastrous display against Northants on Saturday where my own family’s take on fashion was in full effect.  My Mum, her husband, my brother and me all sat in (almost matching) Warwickshire caps… We looked a bit like we were on day release from a mental asylum and if pushed for an answer, most observers would have probably picked out the 12 year- old George as the Care Worker in charge.  One for the family album.  He was fresh from having a pre- match brunch with the players as part of the grizzly’s membership I bought him for Christmas.

I was deflated and, to begin with, quite let down by our batting performance but during the 5 minute cycle home through Canon Hill Park I had a moment of quiet reflection.  Northants had batted in great conditions.  In Johan Botha, they had a World Class T20 slow bowling option.  With the rain threatening throughout our innings, we had to try and keep up with an imposing Duckworth Lewis par score.  Losing regular top order wickets in our attempt to do so left us in a very bad place.  If the weather had been fine we would have been able to play ourselves into the innings before piling on the runs with wickets in hand later on.  Lessons to be learnt?  I guess in T20 you have to play the opposition and the weather in equal measures and not get obsessed by the latter…  But then if it had started raining and we were ten runs shy of D/L with 10 wickets in hand, I’d be saying much the opposite.  I still think this competition is our best chance of silver wear this year so we need to put this behind us and move on.

Away from Edgbaston, the International season has begun.  Trotty, who couldn’t buy a run for us, can’t stop scoring for England and Ian Bell is simply the best batsman in the world.  Sri Lanka were demolished in the final hour of the Cardiff Test by a three man bowling attack who, with the addition of Stephen Finn,  looked subsequently toothless on a flat Lords pitch this week.  Hopefully the re-introduction of Jimmy Anderson (sooner rather than later) will be the simple remedy required.  The declaration came horribly late for a team vying  to be called World Number 1 and who had performed so emphatically to win the previous Test.  For me, the Australian team of the late 90’s and early part of this decade are the bench mark.  At Cardiff we lived up to it but at Lords we fell short.

Finally, I’d just like to bid farewell to Mohammed Yousaf who offered some decent knocks, some comical fielding and caused me to suffer extreme beard envy during in his stint with the club.  As a thank you to Mohammed for his time at the club I have chosen to name a Teddy Bear after him which I hope will help me to remember him for many years to come.

Heavy Set Streakers, Dropped Captains and Catches & The Return of The "ASHES HERO'S™"

I managed to rustle up some company for last Sunday’s CB40 game against Leicestershire with the visit of my old mate Britto whose versatile repertoire of impressions includes Robert De Niro and former Villa Boss John Gregory.  I insisted he arrive no later than 10.20am so we had plenty of time to get to the ground and watch Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell if we were batting first. Now, despite having read every word written about Warwickshire in the last month,  I couldn’t have been less well informed if I’d been in solitary confinement at one of Her Majesty’s Prisons.  Not only were our “Ashes Hero's™” not in the squad but the game didn’t get underway until 1.45pm.  I gave it the big build up as we strolled through Cannon Hill Park, “ If you look carefully you’ll get your first view of our new floodlights through those trees”, “If we cut through here you’ll get your first glimpse of the new stand”, “Seems a bit quiet”, “Have I got the right day”?  On balance I was pretty relived that I’d only got the time wrong and we took the less scenic route home up the Pershore Road.

Take Two… After a gourmet picnic in Cannon Hill Park with the girls, we walked towards the Edgbaston Road entrance (“Look at the floodlights… again”, “Check out the new stand… again”).  Before taking a seat with the members I popped up into theHollies Stand to drink in the new surroundings.  I wanted my first view of the developments to be from my regular Test Match vantage point and I wasn’t disappointed as I was greeted by the kind of view to rival any Cricketing venue in the World.  Resplendent glass and concrete structures and one of the biggest two- tier stands I’ve ever seen (MCG excepted).  Later on I would begin to reflect on the absence of character but for now I was impressed.

Warwickshire got off to an good start with Porterfield making 30 and Chopra looking steady at the other end.  Barker came and went adding just 8 runs (he would do his work with the bat the following day against Scotland).  Last year we became the first county (to the best of my knowledge) to use two pinch hitters at the top of a one day innings: Neil Carter and Keith Barker.  The results speak for themselves as we went on to triumph in the Lords Final.  It was a great piece of innovation that allowed us to get the most out of the power plays.  Our willingness to be flexible with our batting order was also something that made a welcome change from England’s all-too-often stubborn rigidity.  An excellent stand between Chopra (who picked up the pace to make an amazing run-a-ball 130) and Youssef (56) followed before this flexibility once again came to fore with Troughton dropping down the order for the bigger hitting Rikki Clarke who hit two sixes in his 39 off 25.  After accomplished cameos from Maddy and Troughton we posted 294 and, frankly,  should have been home and dry.

Leicester flirted with the demanding run rate set by The Bears without ever looking likely to chase the score down.  That was until Taylor, Boyce and White picked up the pace and put the whole ground on the edge of their seats.  Only when Woakes clean bowled Taylor the ball after he reached his century in 81 balls did the game look back in our hands and finally with two balls remaining the game was won.  Woakes didn’t bowl great but his ability to pull out a masterful delivery in games most vital moment further underlines his credentials for the big time.

Verdict:

Batting – excellent

Bowling – unthreatening and almost costly.

The danger with only posting blogs once a week is that three more games can pass me by…. I must try harder to keep up!  I decided to sit out the Scotland game the following day which also went to the wire but ended with the right result. It was probably for the best that I stayed away as the last time I remember watching us play against Scotland was when we lost at Stratford Cricket Club.  I was last seen directing the marching bagpipe band off the pitch in a ‘borrowed’ high visibility vest much to their bemusement and, after a whip around, we managed to pay our friend Jarvis to streak.  I can’t remember the exact headline in the Stratford Herald but it was a real knock to his confidence to be described as a ‘very heavy set nude gentleman’.  A day on the Hook Norton can rather compromise one’s ability to assume the correct behavior!

If Jim’s decision to drop down the order against Leicestershire was flexible, he has shown the ultimate flexibility in dropping himself for the game against Lancashire at Edgbaston.  With Trott and Bell back in the squad there was always going to be difficult decision.  I wander if this was discussed pre season or how much pressure was applied from above?  Whatever has happened, on paper it is for the good of the team and therefore to be commended.  That was until we were bowled out for 167 on day 2 and suddenly Troughton was the most missed player at Edgbaston.  Trotts contribution was 9 runs and two dropped catches.  Porterfiled (the only other candidate to sit this one out) made just 2.  After a comeback with the ball and a bit of Lancashire consolidation late on, all three results are possible as so often happens in our games (just one draw last year).  Let’s hope we can have them out by lunch and be chasing as close to 200 as possible.

You Bears.

Panda's, albino's and the conundrum of the train's toilet door.

I had the privilege of attending New Road on the final day of our Championship game against Worcestershire.  Varun Chopra’s superb double century on Day 3 had set up the real possibility of overturning the 175 first innings deficit.

After an eerie first hour that saw Warwickshire wickets falling quicker than runs were going up on the board, it all came pretty good.  Chopra, Troughton, Clarke, Johnson and Woakes had all departed without troubling Worcester’s faltering scoreboard before Ant Botha’s contrasting knock of 28 off 31 balls.  This set up an attacking declaration from Troughton that got tongues wagging amongst the modest crowd.  The target of 288 at just over 3.5 an over gave Worcester a sniff but also displayed Troughton’s confidence that his bowlers could get the job done in the 75 or so remaining over’s.   A little more than five hours later Chris Woakes had figures of 6-49, Warwkishire had dispatched their local rivals and I had the most stupid sun tan you’re ever likely to see (think Panda - red face but bright white eyes where my Sunglasses had been all day).

You don't often get to spend 7 hours sat by yourself...  People watching, eavesdropping on conversations, a cool bag of fruit, wine and Taramasalata and Alfalfa Sandwiches plus a well thumbed news paper.  To my right was the most sun tanned man in the midlands whilst to my left an albino chap– a beautiful and amusing contrast.  At one point Chris Woakes’ Mum and friends were stood behind me (I learnt this through overhearing their conversation – I am not familiar with the family) and it was nice to hear how proud she was of his England debut and his brilliant start to this season.

Well played Chopra and Woakes and well declared Jim.

I took the train from Worcester Foregate Street back to Birmingham shortly after the finish.  After a beautiful English day on the banks of the River Severn beneath Worcester Cathedral watching a glorious day of English County Cricket, the train was packed with folk who’d been out celebrating the day of England’s Patron Saint.  Now I don’t want to come across as arrogant or superior but, like most of you, I can actually work a toilet door.  Open – Close – Lock…  Simple.  However, a number of the St George’s Day revelers found this to be like a mental Crystal Maze style conundrum.  One clever chap managed to press the emergency stop button rather than ‘Lock’ and the train had to wait 15 minutes between stations whilst it was re- set.  Oblivious, he then emerged from his incarceration accusing the Train Manager of locking him in the toilet.  A string of others either failed to lock, close or even get into the toilet in the first place.  Later on I narrowly avoided a brawl with the aforementioned emergency stop button moron who took offence when I politely asked his friend to turn off the (terrible) music he’d decided to inflict upon his fellow passengers.  Looking back he must have been fairly bemused to be on the brink of a scrap with a man who looked like a human panda bear.

You don’t get much time to reflect on glories as the next day Warwickshire opened their CB40 campaign with a performance that will be chalked up in the ‘Heroic Defeats’ column.  Chasing 274, we came up just 3 runs short.  In  my head the competition doesn’t really get underway until our first home game of the season this Sunday, a date that’s been in my diary since the fixtures came out many months ago (at least that's my excuse for why I was watching the American made-for-TV movie about 'Wills' and Kate rather than keeping properly in touch with the score).  It’s the kind of tournament where you can’t afford to lose too many early games with only one team guaranteed to progress from groups of 7.

The next destination in the Championship was Durham where Warwickshire have again excelled in the batting compared to last year with another 400+ total.  However that looks like it will soon be wiped out by Durham as we are yet to take a wicket on the 3^rd day at the time of writing.  Some of our frailties as a bowling unit  (compounded by the injury to Ant Botha) are being exposed by Di Venuto, Benkenstein and Blackwell.  Last year Imran Tahir took 8 wickets up at Durham in the corresponding fixture and I fear he will be the big miss this Summer.

Finally, as if I don’t feel old enough for asking someone to turn their music down on the train, I’ve been reading today about Yorkshire’s Barney Gibson who has become the youngest ever first class cricketer at the age of 15 years and 27 days.  He’s less than half my age and he’s currently keeping wicket for Yorkshire against Durham University!

Dedications what you need if you wanna be a Record Breaker

My peers in the fashion industry generally obsess about fixed gear bikes and Summer Music Festivals (but not any of the one’s you’ve heard of – these are more obscure with a bit of a vintage twist).  In contrast, whenever my mind wanders it’s to thoughts of the County Cricket season which kicked off so marvellously at Taunton last week.  But alas, nobody seems interested in tales of Woakes, Chopra and Rikki Clarke and the way they took apart the competition favourites in our glorious opening fixture. I should stress (in case she’s reading) that I also think about my upcoming wedding as well which is set for September 17^th.  Of course if Warwickshire reach the final of the CB40 again then our first day of wedded bliss will be spent with one ear to the radio commentary (I imagine a trip to Lords will be out of the question)!

I’d wanted to get my last blog posted early.  I felt the need to have my moment in the sun with our massive first innings total because I wasn’t unconvinced that Somerset wouldn’t do the same?  The batting line- up looked strong on paper with Trescothick, Kiewetter and Hildreth and a track that was going to be kind to anyone in good nick who was prepared to play themselves in.  In a parallel universe there is every chance that my present feelings of joy and anticipation have been replaced by a flat sense of inevitability after Somerset’s 700+ first innings reply followed by headlines in the press bemoaning the 4 day game’s futile and tedious spectacle.  It’s depressing just to consider and, as luck would have it, reality couldn’t be more different.  Record after record was broken and Warwickshire cleaned up Somerset twice in a little over two sessions of play.  I have pulled together the following list of records from various sources that I understand to be true:

·         642 is Warwickshire’s highest total for 15 years.

·         An innings and 382 runs is the biggest winning margin in our 123 year existence.

·         This also represented the 6^th biggest winning margin in the history of the Championship.

·         If Chris Woakes had taken one more wicket he would have been the first Bear’s player to score a ton and take ten match wickets in 100 years (Swashbuckling and no doubt moustachioed all rounder and captain Frank Foster being the last in 1911).

·         The only man who was happy not to see that particular record broken was Rikki Clarke who took the final wicket of the game which was, surprisingly, the first 5 wicket haul of his first class career.  Figures of 5 for 10 surpassed a previous best of 4/21.

·         Chris Woakes has now scored the same number of first class hundreds as England Test batsman Eoin Morgan – food for thought!

·         The match DVD is currently the slowest selling item in the Somerset Club Shop.

Woakes has taken the plaudits for his all round performance and the likelihood of Warwickshire losing the 22 year old to more international duty this summer looks strong.  Just in case any of the England selectors are reading (and I understand Geoff Miller to be a regular reader), let me be the first the state on the record that Woakes’ figures were actually very deceptive.  He got a very lucky century on a flat pitch and then took 9 very lucky wickets on horrible surface for batsmen.  He has potential which is still best developed with his county side for the rest of this year (that should put them off the scent for a while)!  Varun Chopra should now be brimming with confidence and Jim Troughton can be pretty bloody happy with his first three days in the office as captain.  His toughest decision ahead of the visit to Worcester this week will centre around Mohemmed Youssef and who he will replace in the starting line up.  Ian Westwood must feel vulnerable after being the only man in the top six to fail  with the bat other than Jim himself.  Porterfield could open with Chopra leaving room for Youssef to come in at 3 but Maddy (especially having not been used as a bowling option) might feel equally worried despite a decent knock at Taunton.  The real fun starts when both Trott and Bell are available.

The weather is quite frankly glorious and, if Worcester manage to take the game into days 3 and 4 (a hint at some over confidence there), I might just pop down to New Road and watch my first First Class Cricket of the season in the flesh.

You Bears.

HELLO NEW EDGBASTON

What a beautiful time of year...  Winter is fast becoming Spring and the County Championship Season has begun.  All winter I have watched with the excitement of a child as the new Pavilion End at Edgbaston rose from the rubble of it's predecessor.  My only sadness was that the little Red Stripe Bar (later Marston's Pedigree) on the extreme edge of the Eric Hollies Stand had been reduced to dust - Many a memorable day had been spent in front of that fine little dispensary of cold refreshments.  When I say memorable, I should confess that I have only hazy memories of the evening sessions come to think of it.

Prior to picking up an injury in the Birmingham Half Marathon last October I would run passed the ground every night trying to visualise the inside and where I might be watching my cricket from in the 2011.  Since the running has been more sporadic, I've manipulated car journeys and walks through Cannon Hill Park with unnecessary detours down Edgbaston Road to catch a glimpse of developments.

I upgraded my season ticket to Full Pavilion Membership very early in the Winter break and Test Match tickets had been bagged more than a year in advance thanks to my very well organised friend Chris.  If I were to compare my excitement prior to The Ashes to that of preparing for a once-in-a lifetime holiday then the start of this Championship season feels like starting a dream job.

As a follower of Newcastle United, Coventry Rugby Club and the England Football team I'm familiar with having my sporting hopes and dreams killed off before they have any chance to blossom.  In stark contrast, Warwickshire have produced a batting performance superior to anything they managed last year, or in fact in the last 15 years.  Chopra made 210, Woakes 129 at a run a ball and Maddy, Botha, Ambrose and Porterfield have all contributed to a total of 642.  All that after losing the toss and being asked to bat.  The only flat notes were Ian Westwood's and Jim Troughton's early dismissals.  Both players come in off the back of poor 2010's and Westwood's place in the team will come under the most scrutiny when Bell and Trott are available and Mohammed Youssef arrives at Edgbaston.

This isn't the worst bowling attack we will face this season with Kirby, Willoughby and Mendis all being of decent pedigree.  Clive Eakin and Phil Britt assure me on Coventry and Warwickshire's commentary service that the pitch might not be as dead as this first innings total suggests which they also reliably inform me is the sixth highest total in our long history.  By this evening we'll know for sure but let's hope my next posting is describing the closing stages of an innings victory to kick off our Championship campaign.

This is just the beginning:  I plan to post updates throughout the season with a bit more humour and a bit more in depth analysis.  It's all part of my mission to build up a portfolio of work that will one day justify my place on the Test Match Special team.  I hope you might pop back for a read.