Cricket: Bears Need a Hard Rain to Fall ; Cricket: Lv County Championship Division Two Northampton (Second Day): Northamptonshire 385 Warwickshire 129-7

Summary

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How the mighty are fallen! Warwickshire are a club with financial clout, an illustrious history and facilities to turn most of their competitors green with envy. And yet, yesterday, they found themselves outplayed by a mediocre second division side lacking their opening bowler and their overseas player.

It was, as Bob Dylan put it, like watching an actor going through the bins outside the theatre where they used to star. These are sad days for Warwickshire supporters. How did it come to this? Complacency has been one factor. Years of poor scouting and coaching are another. The sort of petty squabbles that forced the world's leading coach, Bob Woolmer, to leave Edgbaston hardly helped and it is also true that few clubs can afford to produce players as good as Kabir Ali, Mark Wagh, Graham Wagg and Moeen Ali only to see them leave.

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Cricket: Bears Need a Hard Rain to Fall ; Cricket: Lv County Championship Division Two Northampton (Second Day): Northamptonshire 385 Warwickshire 129-7

The current players also have to take some responsibility, however. It was their long-hops that allowed the last five Northamptonshire players to treble their total and their brittle batting that cracked under the merest hint of pressur...

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