Just finished reading Jonathan Trott's autobiography,   Unguarded .  This post is partially a review of the book but more my recollections of Trotty, most of which come from first class not international cricket, appropriate given Trott played 281 1st class matches of which 52 were tests. So when did I first see Jonathan Trott?  I think it must have been Chelmsford in 2003, right at the end of his first full season with Warwickshire.  The cricket world wasn't that different then compared to now, the two division county championship and 20/20 were both up and running.  What do I remember about him? There was quite a lot of hair and his driving down the ground was impressive,  the ball leapt off his bat faster than it should.  I had him marked down as talented but impermanent. It was an impression reinforced when I saw him at Lord's the following June.  The 2004 Warwickshire side were a tough team to play, they didn't lose a game in the...

Warwickshire recently released its accounts for the year to 30 September 2018.  I commented on the accounts for the year to 30 September 2017  here  and this post looks at the 2018 accounts in more detail. On the face of it things are grim.  Although the club tries to focus attention on something called "operating EBITDA", the accounts show a loss of £1.5m for the year, even worse than 2017 when the county lost £0.9m.  The year on year losses take a toll on the financial condition and the Balance Sheet shows the club has liabilities £2.5m in excess of its assets. The loss for the period is maybe not quite as bad as you would think as it includes £1.5m of depreciation which is effectively an accounting measure of the cost of replacing the existing stands etc.(See my previous post if you want to read about depreciation.)  Of course we won't have to do this for years to come and you might argue that a more accurate figure would replace the depreciatio...