Summer is definitely coming – and with it another fascinating county cricket campaign. Our countdown to the LV= County Championship, which begins on Sunday 12 April, starts here, and over the next three weeks we will be speaking to a key figure from each of the 18 counties, working our way up the 2014 tables from Leicestershire to Yorkshire.
As an added bonus, we’ve canvassed expert opinion from two broadcasters who probably see more county cricket than anybody else: David Fulton, the former Kent opener who is a key part of the Sky cricket team and reports from county grounds for Sky Sports News; and Kevin Howells, who anchors the BBC’s ball-by-ball commentary of every game through their local radio network and 5 Live Sports Extra.
Kevin Howells (BBC radio)
Come on you Foxes. I like what I've heard so far from the new management on and off the field. Small steps in the championship with a mid-table finish, and a decent run in one day cricket.
David Fulton (Sky Sports News)
I like what I’ve heard about Andrew McDonald; he’s a reminder of happier times at Grace Road with their T20 success. And Yorkshire haven’t done bad since appointing Dizzy Gillespie as an Aussie coach.
It may seem strange to start a countdown to the season with the team who have finished bottom of the LV= County Championship pile in each of the last two summers and have not won a championship game since September 2012.
But there is a new mood of optimism at Grace Road, following the injection of a new chief executive, a new head coach and several new players – including one more only this week.
Confirmation that Mark Cosgrove has been recruited by Andrew McDonald, the new head coach in question, to offer his unique blend of big-hitting batting and irrepressible personality as Leicestershire’s 2015 captain in all forms of the game followed the signings of Clint McKay and Grant Elliott - the latter for the NatWest T20 Blast only.
They are likely to be followed by one more recruit to signal the Foxes' intent to have another serious crack at a tournament they won three times from 2004 to 2011.
McDonald was the competition’s leading run-scorer for the last of those three triumphs. The 33-year-old will not return to the East Midlands until the end of this month because of his playing commitments with South Australia, but has been supervising pre-season training from a distance, with county stalwarts Ben Smith and Lloyd Tennant his men on the ground.
“Macca has been all over our winter schedule, and Ben and Lloyd have done a great job with the players,” said Wasim Khan, whose appointment as chief executive back in October was seen as so significant well beyond Grace Road, after his work with the Cricket Foundation and the Chance to Shine charity.
“To be honest it was a bit of a subdued environment here at the start of the winter after what had happened last season. I don’t think people felt empowered to do their jobs, and we needed to give them that power and also create more of a culture of accountability.
“Now the mood is very different and everyone’s really looking forward to the season. Obviously we haven’t played a game yet. But one of the goals I’ve set for the team is to get promoted. I know that sounds ambitious for a county that’s finished bottom in each of the last two seasons, but I’ve done it for a number of reasons.
“Everybody starts on zero points in April. The past is the past, and we’ve got a sprinkling of quality cricketers coming in and others in the group with experience. If we talk about finishing mid-table, we’ll finish second bottom.
"The team came close in a few games last year without getting over the line, and on the field as well as off it we want to create a winning mentality. Talking about getting promoted is the right sort of statement.”
Wasim, who became the first homegrown British Asian to play county cricket when he made his Warwickshire debut in 1992 and later moved on to Sussex and Derbyshire, is equally enthusiastic about the off-field developments at Grace Road.
A new £1million junior cricket facility was launched at the city’s Crown Hills Community College last autumn, and the county have targeted 250 schools as they aim to work more closely with the Leicestershire Cricket Board.
Another priority must be to end the steady exodus of talented cricketers who have left Leicestershire in recent years, with James Taylor and Harry Gurney going on to represent England after being tempted to Nottinghamshire, and Josh Cobb, Greg Smith, Shiv Thakor and Nathan Buck all moving on to other counties at the end of last summer.
That will not make the rebuilding job any easier, especially with McKay unavailable for the first match of the season against Glamorgan at Grace Road.
But Leicestershire fought off advances from other counties to persuade their highly-rated wicketkeeper-batsman Ned Eckersley to sign a new one-year contract and veteran seamer Charlie Shreck is also staying on – and doubtless looking forward to continuing his late-career batting improvement.
Angus Robson, the younger brother of Middlesex and England’s Sam, will be aiming to build on his 2014 campaign, when he was the only Leicestershire batsman to score 1,000 championship runs, and Niall O’Brien remains a feisty Irish influence in the middle order and behind the stumps.
That new mood of optimism does not seem misplaced.
IMAGES | The groundstaff have done a top job to allow the players to get outside today. Netting & fielding practice pic.twitter.com/5T9pgH8A67
— Leicestershire CCC (@leicsccc) March 17, 2015
Leicestershire
Captain: Mark Cosgrove
Coach: Andrew McDonald
In: Neil Pinner (youth), Zak Chappell (youth), Clint McKay (Australia), Aadil Ali (youth), Grant Elliott (New Zealand), Mark Cosgrove (Australia)
Out: Shiv Thakor (Derbyshire), Nathan Buck (Lancashire), Anthony Ireland (released), Michael Thornely (released), Josh Cobb (Northamptonshire), Greg Smith (Nottinghamshire)