Warwickshire 190 for 3 (33 overs). Trott 29, Troughton 1.
Westwood moved sweetly to 55 then tried to sock Chris Whelan over long off but holed out to Hick in that position. Trott is nurdling the ball around nicely. All very gentle stuff.

Warwickshire 138 for 2 (26 overs). Westwood 23, Trott 10.

Carter was out for 43, bowled, like Maddy, having a big swish at Batty. Westwood has swung Batty for two sixes. It's turned chilly and the small crowd is starting to shiver.

Rather optimistically, an ice-cream man has turned up.

Warwickshire 92 for 1 (18 overs). Carter 32, Westwood 1.

The bowling is pretty modest, you'd have to say, with the pacemen wisely restraining themselves on the greasy run-ups.
Maddy eased to 51 and then effectively retired, missing with a great big mow at a straight one from Batty.

Warwickshire 52 for 0 (10 overs). Maddy 36, Carter 13.

This is one of Carter's less ebullient punch-hitting efforts. It's a slow pitch, though, ill-suited to beefy hitting.
Simon Jones has bowled a couple of overs of slow-medium.

Warwickshire 25 for 0 (6 overs). Maddy 15, Carter 8.

You have to say a big 'well done' to Worcestershire after all the problems they have had with the ground flooding. Even two weeks ago New Road was partially underwater again. Now it's looking good, a bit threadbare in patches (quite understandably) but playable for a friendly.

Maddy looking in good nick.

A 40-over 12-a-side contest will begin at noon on a chilly day and a distinctly soggy outfield.

Worcestershire won the toss and Warwickshire will bat with a team of: Maddy, Westwood, Trott, Troughton, Frost, Botha, Parker, Poonia, Groenewald, Daggett, Anyon, Carter.

The Bears' 50-over friendly with Worcestershire at New Road tomorrow is on, barring serious downpours tonight. I'll put a few details on here as the game progresses.

If I'm not called upon to purvey a few overs of leg-spin, that is...

Warwickshire's players are hard at work in pre-season training, mainly on yer regular crickety-type activities - batting, bowling, fielding and the like.
But there's more. All the Bears players have been or will be given a briefing on...the law regarding to corporate manslaughter.
This makes a lot of sense. It means that Jonathan Trott can venture out to bat safe in knowledge that, should he hit a six which clonks somebody on the bonce with fatal results, he will be well-prepared for any subsequent litigation. Similarly, Jimmy Anyon can hurl himself into sliding stops on the boundary comfortable with the fact that, if his momentum takes him into collision with the boundary fence, a shard of which splinters off, flies through the air and pierces a spectator tragically through the heart, he will be equipped to fight any pending legal battle. Makes sense.

Or has the world gone slightly mad?

In 1888, after a year of very poor financal performance, Warwickshire trimmed costs by ceasing to provide lunch for the professional players. Is this not a move that the county should seriously consider in 2008?
If not a complete abolition of lunch, perhaps an incentive-based system whereby a player is allocated an amount of nosebag relevant to the amount of runs/wickets he has secured.

I can vouch for the fact that avoidance of an empty tum is a great spur to work harder. When I was little I had to do the chores (sweep the chimney, scour the cooker, remove the dead rats from the outside lavatory and sandpaper the cat) before I was given even a few scraps.

I came from a poor family, you see. One year things were so tight that mum and dad gave me an empty box for Christmas and told me it was an action-man deserter.

It's a national disgrace that the BBC, having not even bid for cricket last time it came on the market, and which now shows such ambivalence to it that sometimes it does not even mention the score in Test matches during its main 6pm news, has shelled out God's-knows-how-much of your and my licence money for the rights to transmit live coverage of cars being driven along roads.
This despite recent figures which indicate that 98 per cent of the British population are interested in the glorious, fascinating, elegant and gripping sport of cricket while car-racing is rated below table-tennis, synchronised swimming, polo, fell-walking and underwater bowls in terms of public interest as a spectator sport.

And, while we're at it, it's high time they repeated 'The Waltons', the whole lot, start to finish, again. Proper telly.