Arthur wants Derbyshire to end season strongly

Head of Cricket, Mickey Arthur, has challenged Derbyshire’s squad to end the season strongly against Leicestershire at The Incora County Ground next week. 

Derbyshire’s saw their chances of promotion end with an innings defeat to Glamorgan at Sophia Gardens and, after Worcestershire and Durham picked up big wins in the penultimate round of fixtures, find themselves sixth in the table.

After a much-improved season, which has seen a number of standout individual and team performances, Derbyshire will be aiming to put in a strong showing against Leicestershire, who they defeated in April, and finish as high up the table as possible.

Having been in the promotion hunt until the final two weeks of the season, Arthur has challenged the squad to give the supporters a positive end to the campaign on home soil.

“I’ve said to our players, it’s not how you start, it’s how you end,” he said.

“We can all sit back and say we’ve had a good year, in comparison to where we’ve been in the last couple of seasons, we’re a side in transition but people remember how you finish, not how you start.

“We need to regain that edge. We’re not on holiday yet and we need to find that winning touch and go out on a high for the Members and supporters, which will give testimony for our season. We want to finish well against Leicestershire and finish as high up as possible.

“We’re moving forward and we have some interesting things in the pipeline as a county, so guys have got to show they want to be on that train.

“I’m interested in trophies, it’s a nice building block to win more than we lose (across all formats), but we don’t want to lose that edge.

“I don’t want us to have worked so hard this season and finish sixth, with only two sides behind us, because I don’t think that would reflect how well we’ve played. We let ourselves down against Glamorgan and we need to regain that edge.”