Palladino highlights bowling depth

One of the many things that I like since Dave Houghton took over as at Derbyshire is how he has steadily, within budgetary constraints, built the squad and covered the obvious weaknesses.

Leus du Plooy arrived last season to make a huge difference to the batting, while Fynn Hudson Prentice came in as an all rounder and looked a real asset with bat and ball. Anuj Dal showed signs of turning from top order bat into talented all-rounder, while Dustin Melton, in limited opportunities, showed obvious pace, to which the addition of greater direction could make a dangerous bowler.

This winter has seen the signing of Sean Abbott, who should be real handful with the new ball, as well as that of South African left-arm quick Michael Cohen. There is now both variety and strength in depth, with the evergreen Tony Palladino and Ravi Rampaul again likely to lead the line, with Luis Reece as further all-round support.

I'm expecting good things from Sam Conners this summer too. He has all of the assets a quick bowler requires and good people around him from who to learn. If he gets it right and is blessed by good luck with his fitness, he could be quite a player.

There's even a good spin option to Matt Critchley, with Matt McKiernan restored to full health after last year's stress fracture, while Aussie Ben McDermott will offer an excellent alternative to Harvey Hosein behind the timbers in one-day matches. I am sure Harvey will score a lot of runs in four-day cricket and offer good ballast to the batting in that format.

Good times lie ahead and I have seldom been so confident of a summer's cricket.

Finally today, in this whistle-stop blog, I read that Tom Wood is again racking up the runs in Australia. A sparkling innings of 120 this weekend made it 200 runs in three innings from his short trip over there for some warm weather nets and training.

I am not yet sure whether he will be a part of the Derbyshire squad until mid-summer, with his contract ostensibly for two months to cover the club during the RLODC. The ECB has new rules that require all second team players to be paid £70 a day, rather than be paid just travel expenses, so the club will have to look closely at the additional costs incurred. Yet logic suggests that we would want someone who is playing regular cricket stepping in for the RLODC.

We will see in due course.