Who knows, at this stage, how Warwickshire supporters will come to reflect upon the 2011 season?

The campaign is still to be properly shaped though there is already one certainty – the Twenty20 campaign will be quickly forgotten. In fact it probably has been already except, perhaps, by poor Darren Maddy.

Sustaining a broken finger ruling you out for possibly the last two months of your penultimate season in county cricket is agonising enough.

Collecting the injury in the 15th of 16 rounds of a desperate, dreary, dead-duck format the inordinate length of which everyone knows is a stupid idea and will never be repeated must be about as irritating as it gets. The hardest of hard lines, Mads!

So the T20, as well as delivering, according to data exclusively obtained for this article, 83.4 per cent tedium and just 16.6 per cent entertainment, had a nasty sting in its tail. Warwickshire’s championship and CB40 campaigns might, however, live in the memory rather longer.

The best 40-over team in the country over the last two years, (Monday’s hiccup in Edinburgh not withstanding) the Bears are eyeing a serious tilt at retaining the trophy they lifted last September.

Meanwhile, who knows whether Jim Troughton’s side can sustain their surprise challenge for the championship.

Whatever happens in four-day cricket from now on, Warwickshire have exceeded the expectations of the many who foresaw only a relegation-battle.

And some fine memories have been banked already, not least right at the start when the Bears’ supporters in Taunton for the opening game found themselves basking in Saturday-afternoon sunshine and the mellow aftermath of an innings-and-382-runs win.

Somerset, having managed between them to equal Varun Chopra’s 210 in their first innings had just been bowled out second time around for 50, fewer than the extras they contributed to Warwickshire’s total of 642. Happy days.

And then there was Arundel.

It is pretty safe to say that all of those Warwickshire supporters – and there were many – who travelled to Sussex three weeks ago will treasure the memory.

At last the Bears paid their first visit to that beautiful venue, set in a tree-lined bowl in the castle grounds with the south downs rolling into the distance. As several of the travelling contingent observed, “it doesn’t get much better than this”.

Except it did when the sun shone and Warwickshire won handsomely

But it is not only spectators that love places like Arundel. Players can be sniffy about outgrounds. It is strange to think that, in days past, the likes of Viv Richards and Joel Garner happily unpacked their togs at rustic Clarence Park in Weston-Super-Mare.

Len Hutton buckled on his pads at club venues from Huddersfield to Harrogate.

Les Ames didn’t bat an eyelid when, in 1937, championship cricket arrived at the Royal Engineers Ground, Gillingham, simply going out and scoring a double century, and even the mighty Sobers did the honours when Nottinghamshire played at Newark and Worksop.

Heroes rubbing shoulders, sometimes literally, with the punters. And, occasionally, why not?

These days, accustomed to facilities much-improved at many county HQs, players are more reluctant to “rough it” elsewhere but at Arundel that was not the case.

Warwickshire wicket-keeper Tim Ambrose, formerly with Sussex, believes it is the equal of many a county base.

“It is fantastic, including facilities,” Ambrose said. “As players, we can be a bit fussy because we are doing our jobs but Arundel is better than half-a-dozen county grounds.