Luis Reece believes signings give Derbyshire a great chance in Vitality Blast

Australian international Ben McDermott has joined up for the Vitality Blast and Royal London Cup campaigns along with former England fast bower Ajmal Shahzad as the club’s as Assistant Coach (Bowling Lead).

It leaves Reece confident of a positive campaign ahead for the Falcons who made the 2019 Finals Day for the first time in their history.

“I can’t wait to see Ben McDermott, he had a great Big Bash,” said Reece.

“His ball striking skills are up there with the best in the world and to have someone of his quality coming over is great. I’m looking forward to seeing how he goes about his business.

“Hopefully we can learn a bit from Ben by playing alongside him and, hopefully, he can give us some of that quality that we missed at times last season. We are lucky at Derbyshire, we have a good batting lineup and bat all the way down, but having another top batsman can only drive us forward, because everyone is fighting for their place.”

The Falcons struggled in the 2020 campaign and exited the Blast in the group stages.

But Reece believes that the experience will have been a good learning curve for the side’s emerging bowling attack.

“We’ve got a great squad, we might be young but all of the lads work extremely hard,” he added.

“The younger lads are always trying to learn and if I can help them along the way, that’s great. All of the lads have played a good amount of cricket now and they have a bit of experience, so having Ajmal come in is brilliant, I played alongside him at Lancashire a bit and he’s very passionate and knowledgeable.

“He played at the top level and he will be valuable with the white ball skills that he can impart on our boys, hopefully they can learn quickly and we will keep improving day by day to be in a good place for the Vitality Blast.

“There’s a score to settle after last year, all of the lads were bitterly disappointed and there’s no better way of putting that right than winning the first couple of games and getting our confidence up.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​