Glamorgan off to South Africa

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Glamorgan will fly out to South Africa this Sunday as they crank up their pre-season preparations ahead of the forthcoming campaign.

A 17-man squad will head to the outskirts of Johannesburg for a 10-day trip during which they will play two warm-up matches against Leeds/Bradford MCCU on March 17 and North West Invitation XI the following day.

Glamorgan visited the same area two years ago and head of elite performance Matthew Mott believes the team are looking forward to returning after weeks of intensive training on these shores.

Matthew Mott hopes the outdoors conditions in South Africa will prove beneficial to Glamorgan. "We want to hit the ground running," he said.

"The players have trained hard physically and on their skills and they are starting to realise that the season is fast approaching, so it’s all coming together," he said.

"The carrot at the end of pre-season has always been our trip to Potchefstroom in South Africa.

"The guys who went out there a couple of years ago were raving about the place. It’s an internationally-recognised facility, it caters for a range of athlete pursuits and certainly getting outdoors and on turf, we're guaranteed reasonably good weather, centre-wicket practice and we’ll actually be on their first-class venue as well which, at this time of the year, is going to be absolutely gold for us."

"We are taking a full squad of 17 players out there with full support staff, setting up game-like scenarios, centre wickets and net practice for everyone to dive in for 10 days of hard work."

With the new season only a month away, Mott is hoping the conditions in Africa will prove the perfect preparation for the domestic campaign.

He added: "We want to really hit the ground running in April and I think we learnt our lessons from last April - that we needed to be outdoors and certainly getting a lot of hits in the right conditions, so that’s a big part of why we are out there."

However, one man who will not be in the going party is Jim Allenby, as Mott explained: “Jim Allenby is not travelling with the squad because he’s carrying a bit of an injury. So to manage the player’s best interests he will continue his preparations here rather than the intensive training of South Africa.”

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