The Only Way Is Up Now For Scott

Paul Edwards finds out that Richard Scott is under no illusions as to the targets that face Middlesex this season

- Paul Edwards

Middlesex’scricketers will not start this season moaning about the slings and crossbow arrows of rough fortune. Nor will they be muttering about spinning pitches at Taunton. They have better things on their minds, things they can actually affect.

Winning promotion, qualifying for the knockout stages of competitions and bringing on the club’s younger cricketers whilst further developing their established players are four projects at the top of head coach Richard Scott’s ambitious to-do list. Relegation? That is just so last year.

“I suppose we can use going down as an inspiration,” said Scott. “But while a lot of end-of-season reviews mentioned the crossbow and the Taunton pitch, our individual and collective performances were just not good enough. However, two teams going down out of eight can be a bit of a lottery and with the way the fixtures are structured now, I’ll be surprised if every county isn’t relegated within the next five or six years.”

Should the conference system be introduced in the County Championship, relegation will be a thing of the past, but that is also something over which Scott has no immediate control. Motivating a group of talented top-order batsmen, none of whom managed to score 800 runs in Division One, is a much more pressing concern.

“It’s up to our players to get their heads down and get us back to where we were the year before last,” he said. “That means high-quality individual performances with a strong collective feel about them.”