Strengthening and conditioning coach Ross Dewar has played a massive role in ensuring Worcestershire's main trio of pace bowlers have not missed a game through injury during the past two seasons.
Left armer Jack Shantry has played all 32 LV = County Championship matches during that period in addition to virtually every white ball game.
Charlie Morris and Joe Leach's only non appearances during that period were down to purely selection matters and they also featured in 30 and 26 LV = CC games respectively.
The trio have all recognised the impact of Dewar and it is testament to the programme that he works out, starting from when the players report back for their winter programme in November right through until the culmination of the season in late September.
First team physio Ben Davies shows his top notch pedigree in helping players recover from injury as quickly as possible – as demonstrated by skipper Daryl Mitchell's rapid return from a hamstring last season in time for the NatWest T20 Blast quarter-final.
But Dewar sees his role as trying to prevent injuries happening in the first place.
He said: "The physios have always been there but with physios it is a case of treatment after you have got injured. How I see the S and C role, is to do as much as you can to prevent injuries.
"It is about how can we best set the guys up so they can get out on the pitch and do as well as they can without getting injured.
"Each player has got a hugely different programme to work to.
"If you look at the bowlers we've got here, Shants has got totally different mechanics to anyone else, Leachy the same thing, again totally different to the other two, and Charlie, again completely different.
"You've got three quick bowlers there all completely different and if you give them all the same programme you are going to get into trouble fairly quickly.
"You have to know what programme is going to help them – and make sure they do it!"
Dewar added: "Is keeping the bowlers on the field a big challenge? That is our challenge. For me, batsmen and spinners are fairly straightforward.
"Any half decent physio-S and C team should be able to keep the batsman on the pitch with no muscle injuries – and spinners as well.
"Spinners are a little bit different now because of the amount of variations they are bowling so you've almost got to treat them like a seamer now in some aspects with the quicker balls and things like that.
"For us, it's about making sure Bump (Steve Rhodes) and Mase (Matt Mason) and Mitch (Daryl Mitchell) have plenty of options to choose from."
*We will be featuring Ross on the Worcestershire website during the next few days.
