Ben Cox is determined to try and avoid last summer’s inconsistencies with the bat in red ball cricket in 2020.
It was a proud day for Cox when he scored a century in the opening County Championship game of the campaign when captaining the side to victory against Leicestershire at the Fischer County Ground.
The County’s long-serving wicket-keeper-batsman also became the first Worcestershire player to top 500 Championship runs in 2019 during the encounter with Gloucestershire at Cheltenham.
Cox admits his form in the long format of the game suffered once the white ball game got underway and the different challenges it possesses in terms of batting technique.
The 28-year-old, who was called into the England Lions squad in Australia after an injury to Tom Moores, has been working to address those issues this winter.
He said: “How do I view my performances in 2019? “So so. I started the year well, particularly in red ball cricket. I was the leading run scorer for quite a long period of time.
“To get a hundred on my captaincy debut, first game of the year…it couldn’t have gone any better really.
“At that time I felt so comfortable with my game and technique that I thought it might be my year and I could go on and get two or three hundreds.
“But it’s the same every year – I spoke about it in my appraisal – in that, as white ball cricket comes into the fold, my technique that I organise in the winter for red ball cricket slowly diminishes with white ball cricket and the power that has to come through.
“The bottom hand takes over and as a result it throws out my red ball technique. At the half-way stage (of the season) I was desperate to finish as the leading run-scorer.
“I didn’t do that but it has made it clear what I have to do next year. I’m just aware of what happened through the season with my technique led to inconsistency towards the back end.
“Also every other county had this elongated period of T20 cricket with one red ball game. We had three red ball games in the same period against Gloucestershire, Australia and Northamptonshire.
“Our schedule was challenging compared to other counties where they could focus on one format of the game and then go back to another.
“It was a shame because it didn’t give us momentum in any format.”
Cox added: “I’m a massive one for needing the training day before a game, just to see a red ball again, get used to leaving it etc etc.
“In white ball cricket, my set up is different, triggers are different to get into a powerful base looking to simply to strike the ball as cleanly as possible. Because we had such bad weather on several of those (training) days it made it hard to go from format to format with any batting rhythm.
“But it’s made me aware of what I need to try and do next season.
“I just need to be a bit more specific on the practice days, and that’s on me to make the most out of the training time we have.”
