In the latest in our series of articles looking at English county cricket’s trophy winners in 2013, we look at Nottinghamshire and their attempts to build on their YB40 success.
Nottinghamshire will intensify their attempts to strengthen their squad with an overseas bowler as they aim to build on their YB40 success by becoming more competitive in Division One of the LV County Championship next summer.
Although supporters and members enjoyed their 87-runs triumph over Glamorgan at Lord’s to secure Nottinghamshire’s first one-day trophy in 24 years, they struggled throughout the first class season and only secured their Division One status in their final match of the summer against Somerset at Trent Bridge.
The stark contrast between their one-day success and struggles in the championship have persuaded Mick Newell, Nottinghamshire’s Director of Cricket, that they must strengthen during the close season if they are to compete at the right end of the table and match their championship success of 2010.
Trent Bridge Cricket Ground, the home of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“The only feeling at the end of the season really is relief because we survived, and that’s not what we set out to do in the start of the season,” admitted Newell. “It was fairly clear early on to me that we were not as good a bowling team in particular as some of the teams we were playing against and ultimately we had to accept that, but make sure we try to do something about that for next season and be competing in the top four rather than the bottom four.”
As part of that plan, Newell is hoping to recruit an overseas bowler to help Luke Fletcher and Harry Gurney, who shouldered the majority of the seam bowling responsibilities during the season and were the only two Nottinghamshire bowlers to claim more than 40 championship wickets.
Injuries restricted Andre Adams, their player of the year in 2010 and 2011, to just 11 championship matches and, at 38, probably cannot be relied upon to bowl as many overs as he once did, while Newell is hopeful they can cajole more out of Ajmal Shahzad, last winter’s signing from Yorkshire, who finished the season out of the side after claiming only 22 wickets from 11 matches.
“I think people like Fletcher and Gurney have ended up carrying the bowling attack,” he conceded. “I think if we could bring a bit more quality in and get Andre back fit then we could have them as a support. I’ve mentioned an overseas bowler and if we can get that and add it to Andre with hopefully Ajmal producing a little bit more of what he should be doing, then we’d maybe have five or six seamers who can get us a little bit higher up the league.
“We know that winning trophies is difficult, there’s only three you can win and we’ve won four now in the last 10 years. I’m quite pleased with that and it’s the first one-day trophy for an awful long time. It’s really hard to win a trophy and we shouldn’t under-estimate what we managed to do.”
Nottinghamshire also have a huge void to fill in replacing David Hussey, who has been the mainstay of their batting for the last decade but has now decided to return to Australia and possibly join the world Twenty20 circus. Only Michael Lumb passed 1,000 championship runs last summer, although James Taylor fell just short of that milestone, and they will now be required to become the senior members of the batting line-up.
Alex Hales, now ranked as the No 1 international Twenty20 player in the world, had a horrific first class season in 2013 and could miss the start of next season if Nottinghamshire give permission, as is increasingly likely, for him to play in the Indian Premier League.
“To be fair the batting has done okay,” argued Newell. “I think that with Taylor, with Lumb, with Samit Patel, with Riki Wessels, with Steven Mullaney and hopefully with Hales coming back into some four-day form, I’m banking on that being strong enough. I just think we need to add to the quality of our bowling – that’s definitely what wins teams the championship and it’s what has caused us to be as low as we are we think.
“There’s a look of good quality bowing in county cricket and I think there are some good seamers. Whether they’re judged to be good enough for England is up to England, but there are an awful lot of good bowlers at this level and the teams that are in the top four have got the majority of them.”
James Buttler
As the editor of World Cricket Badger he is intent on building the website to give quality coverage of the domestic game around the world.
He is also the presenter of the Cricket Badger Radio Show on Radio Yorkshire every Tuesday evening between 7-9pm UK time.
James was the full-time Media Manager at Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 2007 and 2010.
James is a published author, a writer/video contributor to many cricket publications and a complete cricket badger!
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