THE new intake for the Richard Huish Performance Development cricket course that is run in partnership with the Somerset Cricket Board is now well underway for 2016/17.

This year, six talented young players are regularly spending time working in the Centre of Excellence at the Cooper Associates County Ground in Taunton.

During the next two years these young players will enjoy regular two-to-one coaching sessions at the CACG, fielding and skills-specific sessions, access to professional physiotherapy, strength and conditioning training and gym access, psychology and nutritional workshops, and regular player feedback.

At the end of their two-year course at Richard Huish, each of the young cricketers will have also achieved a cricket coaching qualification and attended a groundsman course.

Former Somerset favourite Keith Parsons, who has been tutoring the Richard Huish Academy since 2008, said: “We have got a very strong intake this year and it seems to me that since I began with RHC that the standard of the young cricketers who are joining us has improved quite considerably

"It's a great course that I wish was running at Huish when I was there!"

This year’s new intake will join the eight players already on the programme, making a total of 14 participating.