Yorkshire v Worcestershire: Scarborough sea air can prove to be just the tonic for Moxon’s men

Yorkshire go into today’s County Championship match against Worcestershire at Scarborough in the midst of another barnpot schedule.

Yorkshire were in Twenty20 Cup action only yesterday and play another Twenty20 fixture at Derby on Friday – 24 hours after the Worcestershire game is scheduled to finish.

They then return to CB40 action two days later against Middlesex at Headingley Carnegie – eight weeks after their last match in that tournament and with practically no time to readjust.

It is a schedule that defies comprehension as players constantly flit from one competition to another.

For county coaches such as Moxon, it means a constant balancing act is needed between training, warm-ups, rest and recovery in an attempt to keep players as fresh as possible.

“It’s a very difficult juggling act these days,” said Moxon, whose side go into today’s match second-bottom of Division One – five points behind a Worcestershire team one place above them with a game in hand.

“We’re going from a Twenty20 match straight into a vital Championship game, then into another Twenty20 match, followed by a CB40 fixture, and it’s not easy when you’re constantly going from one competition to the next.

“Ideally, you’d want a few days to prepare for a Championship match, but the fixture list simply doesn’t allow that.

“Even going into different types of one-day cricket is a challenge; there are different power plays, and so on, and one of the biggest problems is that there is not enough preparation time between games.”

Due to the high volume of cricket and scattergun schedule, an important part of Moxon’s role is to manage players’ workload.

As such, he endeavours to ensure that practice and warm-ups give optimum value.

“The key challenge is to minimise the amount of time spent warming up while at the same time ensuring that the warm-ups are as effective as possible,” said Moxon, Yorkshire’s director of professional cricket.

“First and foremost, what we look to ensure before each day’s cricket is that the players are safe to be active.

“By that, I mean that they’ve warmed their bodies up, they’ve stretched, they’ve used Thera-Bands and thrown balls around to make sure their arms are loose, and so on.

“Then, once that injury prevention side of things has been taken care of, they are ready to go out and play to their best.”

Pre-match warm-ups are becoming an increasing part of professional cricket.

Gone are the days when former Lancashire and England pace bowler Brian Statham famously warmed up with “a fag, a cough and a cup of coffee.”

“It’s different now to how it used to be years ago,” added Moxon.

“In my day, you perhaps did 50 press-ups to get loose, whereas these days you’ve got players using medicine balls and things like that, so it’s a different way of going about things.

“There is a danger that warm-ups can go on too long, but we try very hard at Yorkshire to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Although the warm-ups could be taking place for well over an hour before the start of each day, we make sure that each individual player is not warming up for that length of time.

“Each player might just do ten minutes of batting, ten minutes of bowling and ten minutes of fielding, while the lads collectively play football for about 10 minutes to add that little bit of fun and variety.”

Moxon hopes a return to the sea air of Scarborough might be the perfect tonic this week as his side look to pull clear of the relegation zone.

Trips to North Marine Road are undisputed highlights of the Yorkshire calendar, with this week’s contest no exception.

“Scarborough is a great place to play and will hopefully bring out the best in us,” said Moxon.

“The lads love to play there, there’s always a great atmosphere, and, hopefully, we can put in a good performance.

“It’s obviously a very important match when you look at the league table and it goes without saying we need to start picking up points sooner rather than later.

“We had a good result at Worcester in the first match of the season and that should give us plenty of confidence.”

Yorkshire will be boosted by the return of Jacques Rudolph for the following Championship game, at home to Lancashire on Wednesday week, and Moxon is confident they can climb the table.

“Jacques will hopefully give us a lift and I honestly believe we’re capable of beating anyone in this division if we play to our potential,” he added. This year, we’ve missed a couple of opportunities to win games – mainly the Hampshire and Notts games at home – and that’s cost us. If we’d taken those opportunities we wouldn’t be where we are now, but you get nothing for ifs, buts and maybes. “What we’ve got to do is start making it count when we get ourselves into a good position.”

Yorkshire are offering children aged six to 15 a chance to play at Headingley. Two three-day coaching camps will see current and former Yorkshire players passing on their experience and advice to young cricketers. Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale will also be on hand to offer his advice and coaching to the youngsters. The camps – July 27, 28 and 29 and August 30, 31 and September 1 – run from 10.0am to 3.0pm and will be conducted on the pitch and at the indoor cricket centre.