worcestershire returned to training today ahead of the specsavers county championship match with surrey beginning at New Road tomorrow (monday) and vitality blast finals day on saturday.
the county are in the middle of a schedule of five championship matches in five weeks with the blast showpiece staged in the middle at edgbaston.
the players were given a day off to recharge their batteries after the home setback against hampshire before several of them played birmingham league cricket yesterday.
the surrey game is scheduled to finish on thursday afternoon and then the county will switch into white ball mode – before they travel to chelmsford on monday week for the championship clash with essex.
head coach kevin sharp: “we’ve got surrey next, a big game, they are flying. we’ve got to regroup and get on with it and practice sunday morning and get ready for that.
“also during the course of that game, we’ve got to think about the game that is following up on the saturday morning (blast finals day).
“am i confident of bouncing back from the hampshire defeat? these are resilient lads. they’ve done ever so well this season overall.
“we’ve competed pretty well in the championship.
“just at the key moments we haven’t been able to take them as well as we could in championship cricket.
“but we’ve three games to go and, with a couple of results, we can still stay in the division.”
sharp has named a 12 strong squad to face surrey.
seconds skipper ollie westbury is included and in contention to make his championship debut after a fine season with the bat.
he has already made his senior breakthrough this summer in list a cricket – skippering the side versus west indies a – and scoring 24 off 16 balls against leicestershire in the vitality blast.
alex milton will keep wicket for the second time this summer and takes over behind the stumps from ben cox.
worcestershire (from):
mitchell
fell
westbury
clarke
d’oliveira (c)
milton (w)
whiteley
barnard
parnell
tongue
pennington
twohig
