Worcestershire could be forgiven for feeling down on their luck, with their ground still submerged following its fifth flood of the winter and their pre-season tour in the balance owing to the coronavirus.
The county announced on Wednesday that their first home match of the season against Sussex on 25 April must now be staged in nearby Kidderminster given New Road has spent 66 of the past 131 days under water.
And in the background the county’s trip to Abu Dhabi on 18 March remains subject to official clearance given their intended hotel, the Crowne Plaza, has been on lockdown since last Friday in response to the two suspected cases of Covid-19 that meant cycling’s UAE Tour was cancelled early.
“It’s a hold-our-breath and fingers-crossed job,” said Alex Gidman, the club’s first XI coach. “The health of the players comes first and we’ll be guided by the governments at both ends, the people who know what they are talking about.
“Essex are due to head over to the UAE next week on pre-season and Somerset a few days before us, so hopefully they will be good to go and we can follow suit.”
Losing the use of New Road to flooding is not new territory for Worcestershire – last year alone saw three fixtures moved – and the latest switch in venue may yet be for only one match, with their second, at home to Middlesex, not until 15 May.
The full extent of the latest damage will not be known until the water has retreated. Gidman said: “It’s the highest I have ever seen the water. And we’re just coming into the time when we typically flood based on previous years. It’s been quite extreme and one issue is what is left behind once it’s gone.
“You can have clean floods where the water comes and goes but with these longer ones they become dirty floods. You get two or three inches of silt – pretty rotten stuff – and various bits and bobs left behind once the water retreats. One year there was a picnic bench.
“Our groundsman, Tim Packwood, is as upbeat as groundsmen get and has dealt with flooding for donkey’s years. The biggest challenge is that the square hasn’t been dry all winter and the seed planted at the end of last season hasn’t taken. I expect the square will be quite a challenge for him but he’s an expert.”
The England spinner Jack Leach has revealed he feared for his life after being struck down by sepsis on the winter tour of New Zealand. Leach played no part in the series victory in South Africa after being struck down by illness and has arrived for the two-Test series in Sri Lanka carrying an injury in his left calf, but those issues pale in comparison to the serious problems he experienced in November.
Speaking for the first time about the severity of the incident, Leach told PA Media: “I didn’t know too much about it at the time, how serious it could be but I remember feeling very ill. I remember thinking, ‘Don’t fall asleep because you might not wake up’. It was that serious in terms of how I was feeling.
“That’s when they called an ambulance and got me to hospital. Once I got there, got the antibiotics in my arm and on to a drip I started to feel better quite quickly but it still took a couple of nights in hospital and I was probably still recovering when I flew back from New Zealand. It took longer to get over than I thought.”
