Solanki settles for the long haul

The curse that is the Worcester weather dealt another unwelcome blow yesterday, a succession of heavy downpours defeating all the efforts of the New Road groundstaff to salvage even an extra point or two from the wreckage of the Second Division match against Warwickshire in the CricInfo County Championship.

Indeed, being denied a further chance to bowl cost the visitors a quarter of a point, that being their penalty for a tardy over-rate. Worcestershire, meanwhile, lost the chance of the extra batting point that three more runs would have secured. Of 12 days of Championship cricket scheduled here so far, half have been lost in their entirety, which is not helpful to a county nurturing promotion ambitions, nor to a batsman hoping to advance his international prospects.

Vikram Solanki falls into the latter category. Among the front rank of young contenders this time last year, the 25-year-old right-hand batsman has lost his place in the pecking order, and his efforts to make up lost ground would have surely benefited from a little more cricket, even on tricky pitches. His 29 in the first innings against Warwickshire was only his second Championship knock at county headquarters this season.

"I have not had the time in the middle I would have liked," he said. "For one reason or another the season has not really got going for me yet. But I'm not looking for excuses.

"People might say it is hard for a batsman playing here, but it would be too easy to blame the pitches at New Road. I feel sorry for the groundsman. He is doing his best but you could not have had a worse winter than the one we have just had.

"Playing at New Road did not exactly hinder Graeme Hick, did it? You can allow pitches to get on top of you but if you are honest with yourself about your form there are usually other factors involved."

Having won seven one-day international caps in South Africa and Zimbabwe last year, Solanki followed a decent domestic season with an England A tour to the West Indies. But he enjoyed only modest success there and having had to wait until this month to post his first half-century of the current first-class campaign, home or away, he knows improvement is required. Does he not envy the progress made in the meantime by such as Marcus Trescothick and Owais Shah, erstwhile A-team colleagues?

"I'd like to be in their position," he said. "But I don't look at other players' scores and wish they were not doing so well. Marcus and Owais have deserved their success because they have worked hard."

In any event, Solanki is steadfast in his belief that he has scope to improve on the natural ability Worcestershire first saw in him as a 15-year-old, and feels he is ideally placed to do so, not least because of the presence of Hick, his captain, and of Tom Moody, the county's director of cricket.

"I've been here for nine years but I'm still relatively inexperienced, far from the finished player, and I could not have better advice than that which Graeme and Tom pass on.

"The day I first came to New Road was the day Tom made 160 on his Sunday League debut. He has been around all the time I have been here and knows my game very well.

"But they have both been through troughs as well as peaks and can help a player avoid mistakes they might have made. I can relate to them and and I feel they can empathise with me. It gives me confidence to be working with them."