PEARS skipper Joe Leach hopes his Worcestershire side will end the season on a high note as they return to LV=Insurance County Championship action with four matches in four weeks.
A clash with Sussex at New Road kicked off four final four day clashes in Division Three of the tournament to conclude a 2021 which has seen the county also fail to make the knockout phases of both the Royal London One Day Cup and the Vitality Blast.
The current clash is the first senior action for 20 days since the conclusion of the Royal London Cup campaign, although many of the players participated in the Second Eleven Championship match against Warwickshire.
Leach said: “It’s been quite an unusual period in not playing any first-team cricket for three weeks at the height of the summer, having played nine successive weeks in the Championship from April to early June.
“But the lads had a good week of red-ball practice and got in some excellent time in the middle in the Seconds game last week to get any ring rustiness out of the system.
“It helped to readjust to red-ball cricket after a couple of months of T20 and List A cricket, and we are looking to finish the season on a positive note.
“It goes without saying that we would prefer to be fighting for the County Championship title, but there is still lots of benefits that we can take from these four games.
“We want to top the group we are in, and it helps us have some momentum to take into the winter training programme and the start of next season puts some building blocks in place.
“We played some good cricket at times during the initial block of Championship games, showed a lot of determination in games where teams had put big scores on the board.
“We will be looking for that all-round consistency over four days in matches through September, and, in addition to the team goals, players will also want to achieve any individual targets they may have.”