Young trio sign fresh deals

Date: Tuesday 15 December 2009

Leicestershire trio and England u19 internationals Nathan Buck, Josh Cobb and Greg Smith have signed new three-year deals with the club.

Smith will continue combining his studies at Durham University with cricket at Grace Road, while Buck will join the full-time staff for a full season for the first time in 2010.

Cobb now has one-and-a-half seasons of first team cricket under his belt and will be looking forward to stamping his mark in the County middle order.

It is a great boost for the club to have all three join James Taylor in committing until 2012.

Buck, who is currently preparing to go to the Under 19 World Cup in New Zealand, played a number of first-class and List A games last season and enjoyed his cricket.

He finished his A levels earlier this year and is now looking forward to having a full season of professional cricket.

Buck, who is a product of the Academy and has also played plenty of cricket for Loughborough Town, is also relishing the prospect of working with new club captain Matthew Hoggard.

He said: “It’s nice to finish school and concentrate 100 per cent on cricket. I am looking forward to the World Cup and then getting stuck in here.

“I enjoyed every minute of last season. Looking back on it now, I can see it was a great experience and I learnt a lot from it. It’s now a case of pushing things forward.

“I can’t wait to work with Matthew. He’s a talented bowler and has played a lot of games for England. It’ll be a great experience to learn from him.

“Having a bowler as captain will be good, I guess he’ll be more understanding when things aren’t going your way as a bowler. Things are looking up and I can’t wait until next season.

“He’ll be great to learn from and he’s such a good cricketer. It’ll be good to work with him.”

It is all go for the youngster now. After the World Cup preparation and tournament has finished, Buck will join up with some of the other Leicestershire lads in Potchefstroom.

It will then be the start of the traditional pre-season in March. It’s a lot of work, but he’s looking forward to it.

He said: “We’re doing World Cup prep at the minute at the tournament starts in early January. Then I’ll be flying to Potch for a couple of weeks after the World Cup to meet up with the rest of the Leicestershire lads.

“That’ll be good too and then it’ll be back here for pre-season in early March. The season starts as early as it has ever has done so it’s important we’re fully ready. I’m sure we will be”

Leicestershire Chief Executive David Smith is pleased to see the lads commit to the club.

"I'm delighted that Josh, Greg and Nathan have signed new contracts with the club," he said.

"They have all been through our development system. Josh started playing for Leicestershire under-11's in 2002 Greg in 2000 and Nathan in 2003.

"This is exactly the young player development pipeline that the club is trying to produce and sustain as we are totally committed to producing players through our development system.”

* For a full interview with Nathan about the World Cup, please check back before the New Year.