County championship Bowling

[giallo]

What do you guys tend to use for bowling in this format ?
I find success bowling outside leg on 4bars field set 3 or 3bars field set 3 with the later not being so expensive.
as the seasons go on I find 3bars more successful on taking wickets also.

[cde]

For seamers I tend to go four bars middle on a god length to a new batsmen, drop to three putside off when they are about 10-15, depending on how they got there then, then two outside once they are over 20-25.

I find that if the pitch is one bar for seam or just flat then starting off on three bars outside off can be remarkably effective.

For the last few years I've had more joy on three bars with spinners, dropping to two.

Obviously these change with the pitch, bowlers and match situation. Pitch it up if there is cloud, if I am chasing wickets on the fourth day and they have dug in then upping the aggression but making the field more defensive can work. I only go leg side with fast bowlers on a bouncy pitch, dropping it short.

[Chris_]

I'm 10 seasons into my County Championship save in CC22 and more or less settled on my bowling approach.

I bowl on 5 bars (orange) to any new batsman, central aim and good length. When I feel a batsman is getting settled I switch to 4 bars, still central and good length. If conditions are good for batting this tends to be when they get to 12-15 runs, but in poor conditions I might stay on 5 bars until they get to 20 to keep the aggression up a bit longer.

The last few seasons I've kept to 4 bars as a minimum. Before I would drop to 3 or 2 once a batsman passed 40 runs (3 outside off if they favoured the leg side, 2 down the middle if they favoured the off side) but I stopped that after getting frustrated with too many draws. The number of times a batsman would edge the ball just beyond the lone slip was a bit annoying, when it would've been an easy catch for the 2nd slip on 4 bars.

In a Test match I would still utilise 3 and 2 given the extra time available but I've found for the 4 day FC matches it mostly boils down to how fast you can take the wickets. Considering the English weather often throws up rain delays you can end up only really playing for 3 days in total, so I focus more on strike rate and less on economy. I like to keep those 2 slips from the 4 bar field.

As for setup, my pitch favours seamers so I mostly run 3 pace, 1 spinner. If it looks extra weighted towards pace (eg. initial conditions are 2 red bars for bounce but full green for turn) I'll drop the spinner and just run 4 pace bowlers. For the pace bowlers I'll lean towards F/MF if it's sunnier and MF/FM if it's looking really cloudy throughout; I don't know if it's just coincidence but I find FM bowlers struggle a bit when it's sunny, and they're more lethal when it's cloudy.

The past few seasons I've pretty much stuck to good line and length, 5 bars changing to 4.

I only use maximum aggression at the end of a match, if it looks like time is running out and I just need to get their tail end out without worrying about runs conceded. Generally the case when trying to secure a win in a shortened match after rain delays.