ALAN Richardson insists Worcestershire CCC should take ‘great belief’ from their opening seven County Championship games of the season.
The Pears played out a rain-affected draw with Nottinghamshire on their return to New Road as Worcestershire make the switch to the Vitality Blast group programme for the next eight games.
And despite failing to secure a first win of the season thus far, Richardson feels his side can take real heart from some of their performances.
Richardson said: “It’s quite difficult actually. For us, we didn’t quite know how it was going to go. We’ve played some really good cricket for the majority of it.
“We put ourselves in certainly four games into a real good opportunity to try and win games and it didn’t quite happen for us.
“We should take some real heart from those first seven games, especially the performances in those four games. We’ve had some real challenging times as well which is what we expected.
“We’ve really enjoyed it so far. We’ve played against some outstanding teams at some amazing venues. We will review it as we go through the T20. We’ve got eight T20 games and then back into two Championship games and they will be something we will be looking forward to.
“It will be nice to put some more good performances together and see where that takes us. You like to think about the performances first and foremost and those have put us in a position to be competitive.
“You don’t want to be too greedy. It should give us some great belief going forward. In the last game and a half, we haven’t shown what we can do and that’s not a fair representation but in other games we have done.”
Against Nottinghamshire, following a wash out on day one, the Pears were bowled out for just 80 in their first innings with Rob Jones (19), Matthew Waite (16) and Adam Hose the only batters to reach double figures.
Worcestershire found themselves 3-2, 34-5 and 66-9 before eventually reaching 80 runs as Luke Fletcher (3-18), Dillon Pennington (3-25), Dane Paterson (2-15) and Lyndon James (2-22) ripped through the home side’s batting line-up.
In reply, Nottinghamshire reached 234-3 as opener and captain Haseeb Hameed (100) scored an impressive century supported by Joe Clarke (73 not out) and Ben Slater (41).
However, the rain returned with no play possible on day three or day four as both teams settled for a draw.
The result leaves Worcestershire eighth in the County Championship table, nine points clear of bottom club Kent.
Worcestershire begin their T20 Blast campaign against Yorkshire on Thursday, May 30 at Headingley.
The Pears then host Lancashire at New Road on Friday, May 31.
