The Bears / Pears 2010 Cricket Thread

[richard moore]

Got to be rather pleased with that...I follow Hampshire when it comes to cricket

[hilts_coolerking]

Bears struggling in their county game at Somerset.

101 for 6.

Our top order has been too frail too often this season and now we're going to be without Bell and Trott for a while.  Westwood failed again with 4.

[peter w]

We'r eplaying today? And well to be fair, we either play shite or play well and win County championship games. luckily our tail is usually better than the top order.

[peter w]

113-8. Clearly not.

[hilts_coolerking]

127 all out.  Dismal.

But it's obviously doing a bit at Taunton because they've already lost Trescothick.

Whatever happened to the flat tracks they used to play on down there?

[cdbearsfan]

Westwood simply has to go.

[hilts_coolerking]

Good recovery from the Bears.  We were staring down the barrel a bit with Somerset 229 for 4 but they were bowled out for 290.  Still a healthy lead of 163 but we've already knocked off 74 of them for the loss of guess who.

He got 1 this time.

[LeeB]

Forgive my ignorance of the county game, but is Westwood a kind of cricketing Heskey?

[Villan For Life]

Forgive my ignorance of the county game, but is Westwood a kind of cricketing Heskey?

No not really. Bags of ability and he's the capatin so he's unlikely to be dropped. I think that he does need some time out of the firing line though.

He needs to lead by example and with Bell and Trott away with England we can't afford for the captain not to be contributing with the bat.

[Richard]

Forgive my ignorance of the county game, but is Westwood a kind of cricketing Heskey?

No not really. Bags of ability and he's the capatin so he's unlikely to be dropped. I think that he does need some time out of the firing line though.

He needs to lead by example and with Bell and Trott away with England we can't afford for the captain not to be contributing with the bat.

Are you sure and if so when is he ever going to show any of it !?

[Richard]

I think the obvious problem with Warks is the lack of batting depth in the squad when the England boys are away, as evidenced by Clarke coming in at 5. Am struggling to think of the last batting youngster to break through.

[hilts_coolerking]

Well that was a proper battering.  Lost by 9 wickets.

Top order failed twice with only one batsman (Maddy) passing fifty in either innings.  Looks very fragile.

It's all very well having Rikki Clarke at 5, Tim Ambrose at 6, Botha at 7 and Woakes at 8 but if the top order fails, as it did here, then you risk exposing those batsmen to a newer ball earlier on and, as decent as they might be when the ball's old and there's already a decent total on the board, you don't want to have to rely on them to save you every time.  They might do it once or twice, as they have this season, but they won't do it every time.

Ideally the lower order should be:

6 Troughton
7 Clarke
8 Ambrose
9 Woakes

We've lost two players to the Test squad but that shouldn't automatically mean everyone gets shunted two places up the order.  We should have two replacement batsmen to come in.  We need to play six specialist batters and in this game we went in with just four (if you include Westwood).  Time for a rethink.

[ADVILLAFAN]

Forgive my ignorance of the county game, but is Westwood a kind of cricketing Heskey?

No not really. Bags of ability and he's the capatin so he's unlikely to be dropped. I think that he does need some time out of the firing line though.

He needs to lead by example and with Bell and Trott away with England we can't afford for the captain not to be contributing with the bat.

Are you sure and if so when is he ever going to show any of it !?

He seems to be averaging about 4 runs an innings this season....

[Karl Bridges]

Bags of ability

Sadly he lost them on a bus a few years back. Never did turn up.

[hilts_coolerking]

Bears struggling at Edgbaston.

Most of the first day was lost to rain so it'll probably be a draw but Durham are 368 for 9, having been 235 for 7 at one point.

Great effort from Imran Tahir who has taken 7 for 108 but not much penetration from the rest.

Only realised today that we're bottom of Division 1.  It's going to be a long old summer for the Bears I think.  Just can't see where the runs are going to come from.

ETA: Durham all out for 379.  Tahir finished with 8 for 114.  Must be the best return by a Warwickshire bowler for a while.