Bamber’s career-best earns him Player of the Round honour

Ethan Bamber’s career-best six for 26 against Essex last week has earned him the Rothesay County Championship Player of the Round honour.

2026-09-22T10:35+01:00

Bamber’s performances in the first innings helped set up a Bears victory inside two days, a result that saw the team propelled to the top of the Division One table with one game remaining.

The 27-year-old has taken 60 wickets this season, at an average of 20.73, and has moved into third place on the leaderboard in the Cricket Media Club Rothesay County Championship Player of the Season award.

Bamber is yet to win silverware as a county pro but could be in line for an awards double as Warwickshire enter the final round with an 11-point lead over second-placed Somerset. Bamber though is not getting ahead of himself as he provided an insight into the mentality of the squad.

“I think there's been really nice acknowledgement of the situation we're in and I think that's important,” said Bamber. “You've got to lean into those things. I don't think you can push them away.

“But at the same time, you understand that there's still a lot of cricket to be played and what's got us in this position is executing our skills over a long period of time to a high level.

“We're going to try and play the game like we would play it in April or May or July, any of those. You just try and play to win as best you can.”

On the chance of winning a first major trophy Bamber, who started his career at Middlesex in 2018 before moving to Edgbaston before last season, said: “It does feel quite surreal. For someone like me, Division One county cricket is probably the top of my career. That's probably as far as I'll go in the game and that's fine. I'm very comfortable with that.

“You do a lot of thinking about it [winning the Championship], a lot of dreaming about it. I think it'd be really, really cool. And especially to do it with a bunch of people who have welcomed me so much who I feel very close to and at a club that, even in a short time, I feel very close to, it'd be very special.”

He added: “Within the group we’ve had our target of winning the title from the start of the season. One of the things that has stood us in good stead is really focusing and the messaging from above has been all about approach, how we go about it, how we enter a game, less about our own individual methods and skills – we can do that ourselves – but how we want to play as a team.

“What we’ve done recently is a reiteration of how we want to play our cricket. We’ve spoken a lot through the year about operating as a unit and about complementing one another and recognising when there’s moments to hold and when to be aggressive."

Bamber has earned back-to-back player-of-the-match performances to move into third place in the CMC Rothesay County Championship Player of the Season award. That has ensured he will finish inside the top-10 players at the end of the season and make the final shortlist to win the award.

The Cricket Media Club members will vote for the player, from the top 10 on the leaderboard, to win the award which was last year won by Nottinghamshire skipper Haseeb Hameed.

Matthew Potts leads the way heading into the final round with 17 votes ahead of Somerset all-rounder Craig Overton (15) and then Bamber (14).

Mason Crane moved into the top-10 after he earned three votes after hitting his second first-class century in Glamorgan’s win at Surrey while Yorkshire all-rounder George Hill was awarded votes for the fifth consecutive match – the best streak of any player this season – to almost certainly confirm he’ll make the final 10-player shortlist.

Other players to be awarded three votes were: Nick Gubbins of Hampshire for a first-innings hundred against Leicestershire; Ben Cliff for 11 wickets as Yorkshire saw off title-chasing Somerset to make it a double over the West Countrymen this season and Avi Karvelas, who all but put paid to Notts’ title chances with an excellent bowing display at Hove for Sussex.

In Division Two, Worcestershire’s Tom Taylor showed Durham’s batters are human after all with five wickets against the runaway champions; Ricardo Vasconcelos, whose second innings hundred for Northamptonshire so nearly brought about a successful chase against Derbyshire before the rain set in; Toby Roland-Jones whose bowling took Middlesex to the brink before weather saved Gloucestershire; and Khaled Ahmed whose incisive bowling helped Kent beat Lancashire and go second in the table.