Seven of Worcestershire CCC’s Academy players are heading to India later this month to reap the benefits of the Global Cricket School.
Alex Hinkley, Peter Clark, Ed Bragg, Josh Dickenson, Henry Cullen, Rehaan Edavalath and Harry Cooke will fly out to Mumbai on February 14 for the nine-day trip.
Worcestershire Academy Coach, Elliot Wilson, and Head Of Coach And Player Development, Kevin Sharp, will be accompanying the youngsters.
The seven are all part of the 2019-2020 Academy intake with the other two, Reeve Evitts and Ollie Walker, being part of the Worcestershire Under-17 squad who will be in action in St. Lucia at the same time.
Wilson believes the sheer volume of cricket training, conversations about cricket, and how batsman and bowlers learn to cope with different conditions to those in England, will be of enormous benefit in their bid to become professional cricketers.
He said: “It has always been identified that what we would love to be able to do is provide this overseas experience for our best young players.
“Sachin Bajaj, who runs the Global Cricket School, has been supporting groups from England going out to India for 15 years now.
“This year we’ve got the capacity to do it and just before Christmas I sat down with the Global Cricket School and Sachin Bajaj and we were able to organise a trip for this February half-term. We fly out on February 14 and return Sunday 23.
“We’ve got eight days on Indian soil training with seven of the Academy players and we are looking forward to taking them away.
“With these young lads, I don’t think anyone realises just how much cricket they have to physically do to get to where they need to get to become a professional cricketer.
“The sheer quantity of contact time, seven or eight days of just cricket conversations and focusing on training, can only be beneficial.
“There also is that specific intention to see how we bowl on those surfaces because we’ve got a few good spinners in the group travelling with us, and also how we bat on those surfaces. That will be quite exciting.
“The local bowlers come in and bowl, the net bowlers from around the Mumbai area, morning and afternoon to have a bowl at the lads.”
Worcestershire have made several trips to the Global Cricket School in recent years but this is the first time a full group of Academy players have been chosen.
In 2015 Daryl Mitchell, Tom Fell, Brett D’Oliveira and Josh Dell of the current professional squad made the trip.
Two years ago Ben Cox, Fell, Ed Barnard and Ben Twohig went to the Global Cricket School.
