Worcestershire have appointed their first full-time analyst in Adam Kelly who will be part of the off the field team – home and away – throughout the summer.
Kelly will be providing analytical information to Director of Cricket Steve Rhodes, the coaches and the squad on the opposition and the county's own players.
He will be positioned on the Graeme Hick Pavilion balcony during home games and able to assist with any telling knowledge that may prove useful to Rhodes and Co during the course of a day's play.
Former seam bowler Kelly actually had a second eleven game on trial for Worcestershire in 2007 when he played alongside current skipper Daryl Mitchell and batsman Alexei Kervezee.
Rhodes said: "Phil Mellish has done a fine job for us over the years in setting up all the technology we need for the laptops and relaying the information and getting as much analytical information as we can from the software.
"But we've since taken on Adam who we want to really take things to a new level.
"It's difficult to quantify what impact Adam will have but he is going to be with the support team and with players, home and away, and he will have a real insight into the day to day running of the matches and the way we perform.
"His job will not just be to input information, and log information during the games, but it is very much searching for the right sort of information, that is going to make us a better team.
"He is going to be up on the dressing room balcony a lot of the time logging the information. I want him to be able to give me feedback and info every half hour to an hour on how things are going.
"If I miss something, he is the type of bloke that can pick it up. He is going to watch every single ball bowled and log the information. He is going to come up with some useful info."
Rhodes added: "We all know how useful information data can be and that's to people who have possibly played the game and been around the game for many years.
"Some of that info, you are blind to and if Adam can come up with some little nuggets that are going to help us be a really good Dvision One team, then we want to know.
"A lot of teams do have full-time analysts. It is the first time we've had a full-time analyst. I'm keen for him to have a free rein, get involved as much as he can.
"I don't want us to be dipping our toe in. If we are going to do this, then we are going to go the whole hog and we have total access to him – and him to us.
"Adam has got a cricket background which is why he is useful to have in this particular job. Part of his job is to analyse the opposition and also prepare team meetings in consultation with myself and Mitch regarding the content, but preparing us for the games as well."
*We will be featuring Adam on the Worcestershire CCC website during the next few days.
