worcestershire will return to specsavers county championship action at kidderminster for the first time in 11 years via next week’s game with sussex which has been moved from New Road and will begin on tuesday (11am start).
the county were last involved in a four-day fixture at chester road in september 2008 against middlesex – a match switched from New Road because of flooding.
there are three survivors from that game who are part of the current worcestershire set-up in opener daryl mitchell, all-rounder moeen ali and bowling coach alan richardson who was part of the middlesex attack.
the full worcestershire line-up was: mitchell, stephen moore, vikram solanki, ben smith, moeen ali, stephen davies, david batty, gareth andrew, chris whelan, dilhara fernando (overseas player) and andrew harris (on loan).
moore scored 111 and whelan 58 in worcestershire’s innings and smith 52 in the second innings with andrew (5-58) and batty (4-84) the main wicket-takers in the first innings of middlesex who won by eight wickets.
richardson took the new ball and had figures of 19-3-56-1 and 13-3-25-2 and also in the middlesex side were tim murtagh and dawid malan who played in the championship game at New Road two weeks ago.
the great flood of 2007 also meant kidderminster hosted the championship fixtures with yorkshire in august and shane warne’s hampshire the following month.
chester road was a regular venue for worcestershire championship fixtures for many years.
it was staged there between 1921 and 1973 and returned after a 14 year break between 1987 and 2002.
a first class game was held there in 2005 against loughborough ucce in which mitchell made his first class debut.
after the 2007 and 2008 games, it was announced the early season 2012 meeting with surrey was also being switched to chester road because of flooding fears but was then moved back to New Road at short notice as the waters receded.
the last worcestershire first team fixture at the venue was a clydesdale bank 40 league game against the netherlands in 2012.
the worcestershire on that occasion was: moeen, solanki, michael klinger, james cameron, mitchell, alexei kervezee, aneesh kapil, ben scott, shaaiq choudhry, jack shantry and david lucas.
