A post on Mark McCafferty, who has taken over as Warwickshire chairman from Norman Gascoigne. McCafferty came onto the Warwickshire board in 2016 and may have been recruited with an eye to becoming chairman at some stage.  He was an appointed, rather than elected, director and has now, again, been appointed; as chairman. I'm not a big fan of the appointment culture, I think Churchill had it about right when he said, "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" But it should be recognised that democracy in county cricket, or at least Warwickshire County cricket, was always  more theoretical than a practical reality.  The men who guided the county's development, JV Ryder and Leslie Deakins, were, in theory, secretaries to a decision making committee but in reality acted like modern day chief executives and were intolerant of "interfering". Although the membership might

Civil War When I started watching cricket, England was in the grip of a vicious wicket - keeping civil war between the Taylorists (adherents of the smooth, classical technique of Derbyshire's Bob Taylor) and the Knottists (Who championed the rococo brilliance of Kent's Alan Knott).  Like all civil wars it was a terrible thing, splitting families apart, former friends fought each other in the street, there were infamous atrocities and innumerable unrecorded crimes and cruelties.  That conflict has waned in the national consciousness, now it is a part of the heritage industry with reenactments staged by The Sealed Knott Society.   But in another sense the wicket  - keeping wars have never really left us, through Russell vs Stewart, Reed vs Jones to today's trifecta of Bairstow, Buttler and Foakes to say nothing of Pope.  Are we doomed to always be divided between those who think you pick the best keeper and those who want a bit more ballast in the lower middle order?