Bears/Pears/Domestic Cricket Thread

[Villan For Life]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/cn989wr0gvzo

A moving interview with Josh Baker’s parents.

[Gareth]

Sad news for both counties - RIP Norman Gifford

[dave.woodhall]

Sad news for both counties - RIP Norman Gifford

Indeed. Another part of my youth gone.

[Steve67]

Sad news for both counties - RIP Norman Gifford

Oh no! Sad news indeed.

[Villan For Life]

RIP

He joined Warwickshire when we were a very poor Championship side, often finishing bottom in the days of one division cricket. He seemed to instil a standard of cricket that improved the side on many levels. We were still hopeless but we were better and that was down to Norman Gifford.

[Bernie]

RIP Giff, an important part of the Worcs teams I enjoyed watching ,mainly through the 1970s

[Crown Hill]

Was part of a terrible team for Warwickshire and a horrible era full of old players. Was a bit rude with the kids and autograph hunters. Should never have been signed really but the Club was very badly run at the time!

But certainly a very good cricketer to Worcestershire!

[Gareth]

Moeen has come out of ‘retirement’ to sign for Yorkshire for t20

[cdbearsfan]

I hope he wins just as many knockout games for them as he did for us.

[PGW]

I hope he wins just as many knockout games for them as he did for us.

I didnt even realise he'd left us....shows how insignificent he had become with us.

[Villan For Life]

Saw this image on social media, the gap where the hotel and new stand is going looks very small!

[Gareth]

I hope he wins just as many knockout games for them as he did for us.

And I hope he doesn’t win as many knockout games for them as he did for us

[Crown Hill]

Saw this image on social media, the gap where the hotel and new stand is going looks very small!

No quite big (from Deep point to deep extra cover). There were two different stands there before.

[tomd2103]

Was watching the latest episode of Stick to Cricket earlier and despite the best efforts of Phil Tufnell to derail it, there was actually a quite interesting discussion on how to structure English domestic cricket.

 - General agreement that the season should start in April with a 50 over tournament lasting to mid May.  David Lloyd suggested a knockout tournament with Minor Counties involved, but I would go with 20 teams (invite Scotland and Ireland) in a 4 groups of 5 format with semi-finals and final.

 - Further agreement that mid May to mid August should be the County Championship bloc.  David Lloyd suggested 3 divisions of 6 with promotion and relegation.  Michael Vaughan and Mark Butcher suggested it should be 12 teams, but then backed down pretty sharpish when David Lloyd asked them to name which 6 they would cut.  They suggested that the Blast also run in this bloc and Michael Vaughan suggested making Friday nights Blast night, with the County Championship games being played Sunday - Wednesday.

-  General agreement that whatever the thoughts are on The Hundred, it's not going anywhere and should be played in one bloc from mid August to September and the final of it should mark the end of the season.  Mark Butcher made an interesting point.when he said that the Blast and The Hundred should become aligned and the former should lead into the latter.  This is the window where I'd like to see the 50 over knockout with the minor counties as well.

I thought there were some pretty good points made and despite Tufnell clowning around, they came up with a structure that could work and would certainly be better than the current mess.

[paul_e]

I'd agree with most of that but I'd maybe add an element of overlap between the 50 over and 4 day parts because I quite like the early season championship games where the conditions are as big a part of the game as the quality of the players.

Also, as we can see with the earlier stages of the ongoing world cup, T20 is more of a leveller than 50 over so I'd like to see the minor counties involved in that format somewhere.