Evergreen Mitchell: I’m as hungry as ever - The Worcester Observer

Evergreen Mitchell: I’m as hungry as ever

Worcester Editorial 1st Feb, 2020   0

LONG-SERVING opener Daryl Mitchell wants to help to establish Worcestershire as a Division One side in County Championship cricket before the day comes when he finally hangs up his spikes.

The evergreen batsman celebrates 15 years since making his first class debut for the county this summer and has just extended his stay at Blackfinch New Road for two more seasons after signing a 12-month contract extension until the end of the 2021 campaign.

The 36-year-old recognises last year did not go as well as he would have wanted in what was a challenging year for the entire batting group.

But Badsey-born Mitchell still has that hunger and desire to succeed and takes confidence from a career record of more than 13,000 first class runs at an average of nearly 40.




He said: “It is nice to sign on the dotted line again. I think it pretty much means I will finish my career here. It is nice to get a year extension and hopefully we can make some big strides.

“Obviously we’ve been very good in white ball cricket in both formats during the last couple of years. We need to make some progress with the red ball and, if I can finish and bow out my career with Worcestershire established as a Division One team in red ball cricket, that’s one of the goals for me over the next couple of years. It’s something I said to Fanos Hira (Worcestershire CCC chairman) and Paul Pridgeon (Worcestershire CCC cricket steering group chairman) when chatting with them.”


Mitchell said: “I’ve still got that hunger for the game. Absolutely. I didn’t get quite as many runs as I would have wanted last year but still managed three hundreds across a couple of formats.

“I like scoring runs, I like contributing to wins. That’s the most important thing. I think we are all agreed that it was disappointing in red ball cricket last year and that’s something we want to put right in 2020.

“Last year, I see as a bit of a blip. I didn’t get as many runs as I would have liked. That’s fairly obvious and it was the same for the batting unit as a whole.

“But this is a new year isn’t it and come that first game at Lord’s, I’ll be looking to make a hundred, the same as every other time I go out and bat.

“Hopefully I will take a lot of confidence from my career and the amount of runs I’ve scored and trust my method, trust the way I go about things and hopefully get off to a good start.”

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