32.70% dot balls and 44.3% singles
Warwickshire bowled superbly and fielded well tonight for a workmanlike victory which leaves them needing to win three, perhaps only two, of their last five slogfests to qualify for the quarter-finals.
Very poor crowd, only slightly more than for the championship match but with a much flatter atmosphere because, instead of cricket-lovers being allowed to soak up the lovely, traditional sights and sounds of their favourite sport, they were bombarded with failed gimmicks like 'Hi-ho', an over-excited P.A announcer and, curiously, a pink sofa.
Rikki Clarke settled the game with a flurry of clean blows just when it was getting a bit tight. What an enigma he remains.
A thought occurs: Are Warwickshire to emulate Sussex last year: Relegated in four-day cricket, triumphant in the shorter games?
So, farewell, Durham and its lovely people, loveliest of all the lady who I stopped in Chester-le-Street high street this morning to ask if there was a branch of a certain bank in town and who racked her brains to think if one existed and, when it evidently did not, apologised profusely. I assured her that it wasn't her fault and I bore her no malice!
Just one downer. On an impulse today I nipped in for a haircut. It was the most entertaining haircut I've ever had with three hairdressers swapping banter but I did wonder if the chap working on me - "I do the best shampoo in Chester-le-Street" - was concentrating and when I got to the ground and clocked a mirror (I have to take me glasses of in the barber's chair and am always too shy to look carefully afterwards - they might take offence.) I discovered he'd only taken off one sideboard. I look ridiculous. Even more ridiculous than usual, that is.
In Warwickshire's first nine Twenty20s this season, 32.70 per cent of balls delivered were dot balls and 44.3 per cent went for singles. Thrilling.
0.55 per cent of balls delivered went for threes.
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Brian Halford - Brian Halford’s look at Edgbaston.
Brian,
Re the haircut, as a cricketing man you should have called the barber up for 'one-short'...
The contrast between Warwicks' decent performances in T20 and their travails in the 4-day stuff was something that struck me when watching England slump to defeat yesterday. In T20 you can get away with bits and pieces players who can knock 20s and 30s and bowl two or three tight overs. The longer the game the more you need quality in one form of the game or another.
Both Warwicks and England (in the 50 over stuff) seem to have a lot of bits and pieces men. While the latter continue to favour the likes of Luke Wright over Ian Bell (and Tim Bresnan over Ryan Sidebottom or Shazad), England will not have sustained success in the long-form one day game