Worcestershire Assistant Head Coach, Kadeer Ali, has hailed the impact made by Ethan Brookes during his first season of Vitality Blast cricket with Worcestershire and said: “the only thing he needed was an opportunity.”
Brookes had not played a single T20 game in his career before he made the move during the winter from Warwickshire to Visit Worcestershire New Road on a two year contract.
But he has been an ever present in the Rapids Blast side this summer and finished as their leading scorer with 315 runs.
Brookes has also made telling contributions more latterly, the ball, including a career best 4-41 in the penultimate game against Yorkshire Vikings.
A quickfire 30 from 19 balls and then 1-24 from four overs against Derbyshire Falcons on Thursday evening finished off the T20 campaign in style for Brookes.
Kadeer said: “I’ve known Ethan for a long time and there has been absolutely no doubt about his talent.
“The only thing he needed was an opportunity and we feel very lucky that he has come to us and he is showing us, and everybody, now how good he is.
“He has got some really good strengths. As a batter, he is very skilful and you’ve seen that over the last few T20 games where, even first ball, he is reverse sweeping.
“That takes a lot of courage and is really brave. That is something I love about him and we just want him to keep taking those positive strides forward and keep going to his strengths.
“He has shown with the ball as well that he is very skilful. He is still very new to his role in the middle and he is getting better.
“A couple of games, because we have been limited with resources, he has found himself bowling at the end as well.
“He has still got things to learn and get better at but he is showing enough skill at the minute to show he is a big part of our T20 team moving forward.
“Ethan is still fresh to T20 cricket, has only played 13-14 games and he is taking on a lot already.”
