Ripley backing Northants' batting talent as he targets overseas bowler for 2021 County Championship

And the reason for that is that head coach David Ripley believes the club already has enough strength in depth in the batting department.

The 2020 summer may well have been truncated due to the Coronavirus pandemic, but there was still the chance in the Bob Willis Trophy campaign for players to show Ripley they can be relied upon.

The standout performer was Charlie Thurston, who scored 357 runs at an average of 44.63, but the likes of Ben Curran and Emilio Gay also made their mark.

The County made their move in their Vitality T20 Blast recruitment last week with the signing of Mohammad Nabi, and Ripley confirmed they will be signing a second overseas player for that competition.

Asked about signings for the four-day game, the head coach revealed: “We would like to bring somebody in for this first nine Championship matches, to help us get off to a good start in that competition.

“And it is more likely to be a bowler.

“We had some debate about batting versus bowling, and we also had the debate about two overseas players coming in, because you can have that now in Championship cricket.

“But it just didn’t sit right having invested a bit of time in seeing Charlie Thurston, Ben Curran and Emilio Gay playing some Championship cricket in the summer.

“They all looked like they were able to contribute in first-team cricket, and they did contribute.

“So it felt like we couldn’t not reward those guys, so I don’t think we need another batsman.”

Another reason Ripley and his coaching team of John Sadler and Chris Liddle will have come to that conclusion are the players who didn’t even get an opportunity to play first-class cricket in 2020.

“There is a lot of competition because the likes of Josh Cobb, Richard Levi and Alex Wakely will be back in the mix as well, as we chose not to play those guys much last summer,” said Ripley.

“There is also Ricardo Vasconcelos and they will all be clambering for those batting spots, and hopefully somebody will bang out 1,000 runs and make life a bit easier for us.”

That 1,000 run target for one of his batsmen is something Ripley is desperate to see happen, as the fact the team hasn’t had that reliability and consistency in the order in recent years has been a real issue.

Vasconcelos was on course to reach the milestone in 2019 before he suffered a season ending ankle injury, but prior to that the batting pickings have been too slim for too long.

“There is plenty of competition for the spots, and we are still looking for somebody to step up and bang out 1,000 runs in the Championship,” admitted Ripley.

“Ben Duckett was the last one, and before him I think it was eight years since somebody had done it, maybe going back to David Sales or Stephen Peters.

“So we do have got a real focus on saying ‘come on, who is going to be our man to get those 1,000 runs?’.”