kevin sharp says other counties will be “envious” of the conveyor belt of young fast bowling talent being developed at New Road.
worcestershire’s new head coach has worked with the likes of josh tongue, pat brown, george scrimshaw, dillon pennington and adam finch in his previous capacity as second eleven coach.
tongue has become a first team regular and earned an england lions call-up, brown had his first taste of county championship cricket at the end of last season, scrimshaw is part of the ecb pace programme and pennington and finch are members of england’s current icc under-19 world cup squad.
sharp said: “a lot of counties will be envious of us. we’ve got something which a lot of clubs would be quite jealous of at the moment.
“i think we can be quite proud of our development here. you hear through the media and on tv now that worcestershire does get mentioned for its development of players.
“having grown up in yorkshire, where it was very much about bringing your academy through, there is a very similar thing going on here.
“elliot wilson runs a very strong academy. he has got his finger on the pulse and all the rest of us coaches, we support that.
“you look at the team and everyone has been brought up pretty much through the system. in today’s day and age, we can be very proud of that and i think there is a lot of respect for us because of that.
“we’ve got a nucleus of young fast bowlers which is priceless.
“tall, fast bowlers who do something with the ball and make it bounce, it’s rare to have a number of them like we have.
“there are finchy, dillon, scrimy, tonguey is in the first team now, browny is just making his way. he has come on the scene, he is an aggressive fast bowler, he is up for it, he is hungry and he has got some raw talent
“to have a nucleus of these lads in the wings is absolutely priceless.
“both dillon and finchy are in the under-19 set-up and to play in a world cup will be a great experience.
“it is wonderful. the club have had very good representation at national level through the youth groups for this last few years.
“that says we must be doing a lot right with our development.”
