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The gulf showed tonight between a Warwickshire side weakened and in transition and a Northamptonshire team at their T20 peak with the likes of Harvey, Van der Wath and Hall.
Nice to see Willey, the only Northampton-born member of their playing-staff, get a look in. Also good to see Lee Daggett prosper. May he do so wherever life takes him. Lovely fella.
The shallowness of Warwickshire's batting resources was fully exposed. Beyond the top five there are no real T20 match-winners. Such a shame that the chap who sits sixth in the all-time T20 run-scoring list is sitting this whole tournament out thanks to an injury sustained in a warm-up.
Jonathan Trott has hit 119 fours and 23 sixes in Twenty20 cricket.
The crowd tonight for a match between two in-form teams in perfect weather was estimated at 5,500. The ECB really MUST rethink their plans to more than double the amount of T20 in county cricket next season. Every shred of logic suggests it would be a case of flogging a fading horse and possibly administering the fatal blows to it when sensible handling could safeguard and prolong its life.
The crowd didn't really engage with the "Buckin Bronco" did they? Northamptonshire, Somerset and Glamorgan have dispensed with such gimmicks.
There are usually hedgehogs in our neighbourhood. This year, none. Shame.
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Brian Halford - Brian Halford’s look at Edgbaston.
The average hedgehog has around 7,000 spines.
At first they will come to it only late at night, when all the house lights are off, but gradually they will become bolder. It can be very rewarding to feed hedgehogs.
You can buy commercial tins of hedgehog food, (the popular one in the UK is called 'Spikes Dinner'). This is a very good way, as you can be certain the hedgehogs will like it and that it is safe. You can by either a 'wet' meaty version in a tin, or a dry mix. Bread and milk is a popular one, but some tests suggest that milk can give hedgehogs 'upset tummies'. It would seem that the best food for hedgehogs is Spikes Dinner. Always ensure you put out a shallow dish of water out if you are feeding hedgehogs.
Bread and milk is harmful to hedgehogs.
bread makes rats thrive though, i put some bread out on my lawn the other night and it was all gone the next day. hungry rats had nibbled their way through 5 slices of stale Tesco bread. so if you want to protect hedgehogs from bread on your lawn, get some rats.
Brian, I tend to agree that there's a danger of playing too much T20 cricket. However I'd suggest that the economy has played its part in the size of crowd. But also, the Northants game was played on a Monday evening. Most working people will struggle to get through the traffic for a 5.30 start and its pointless arriving late to such a short game. Further to that there was a free Sunday which makes no sense to me at all, surely the fixture compilers need to think harder ?
Hedgehogs natural defence of rolling up into a ball is useless against road traffic. The best way to reduce hedgehog road casualties is to drive more slowly, especially at night when hedgehogs are most active.
Hi Abe - yes indeed and several county chief execs are pushing hard for next season's second T20 to be scheduled mostly, if not wholly, for Friday nights or Sunday afternoons.
I think they've made an error in not doing a proper reformat. By keeping the league the "domestic plus" event, and putting that at the front end of the season, they're going to kill off Finals day - which is undoubtedly one of the best-selling parts of the Twenty20 cup. If that's in late September, you would probably have to have a fully floodlit fixture, with maybe the second semi partly floodlit. I understand that if they want more internationals, they need to put the competition pretty much on the heels of the IPL - but wouldn't it have been better to make the one event that has three games successively staged in the middle of the summer the format was originally designed for?
But this, of course, assumes that those at the ECB engage their brains at the same time as their wallets.
Hi Emma.
"But this, of course, assumes that those at the ECB engage their brains at the same time as their wallets." Spot on.
Have you copyrighted that sentence? If not, I'll use it in the Mail next time I'm having a rant!
Heh, no, feel free. My brief flights into cricket journalism are long since dead!