Hard Work The Key To Siddall's Success

Matt Siddall attributes his record-breaking start to the National Counties Championship season with Cumbria to old-fashioned hard work. 

The 24-year-old slow left-armer has taken 35 wickets in three Championship matches, which included a Cumbria record 14 wickets in a match and a career-best eight for 88 in the defeat by Buckinghamshire at Chesham last week. 

Siddall has taken at least five wickets in each innings of the three matches -  already a county record for five wicket hauls in a season -  and he is the first Cumbria bowler to take ten wickets in three successive matches. 

Siddall has also sent down more overs – 181 – then any other bowler in the country in the Championship this season and is again expecting a heavy workload, and the opportunity to add to his wicket tally, when Cumbria face Hertfordshire at Furness in their final Eastern Division Two match of the season which starts on Sunday. 

“I get a lot of backing from my team-mates. We have got a great team spirit and it’s a fantastic dressing room to be part of,” Siddall said. 

“In three-day cricket you know as a spinner that you are going to be bowling loads of overs and you are going to have a big part to play in the game. 

“You have to believe in yourself and put all the hard work you have done into practice. It’s important that you don’t get frustrated or bored. You have to stick to the process and the plans we have for each batters, keep changing the fields and hopefully it comes off - which it has over the last few months. 

“In the team we have we are maybe a couple of seamers short, so spin is a massive part of our side. Knowing that’s the case it’s about practicing and executing your skills over long periods of time.” 

Despite his prolific wicket-taking in the Championship and tight bowling in white ball cricket, which has helped to take Cumbria to a third successive National Counties Trophy final, Siddall has not yet been picked up by any of the first-class counties. 

“At the end of the day that’s my dream. I want to try to get a Second XI game. There have been a couple of things mentioned but not directly to me,” he said. 

“You have to stay patient, keep doing what I am doing, working hard on the field and off the field and hopefully the phone will ring or an email will come through. It would be unbelievable if I can get a go somewhere.” 

Siddall is a Lancastrian who works as a self-employed decorator based in Poulton-le-Fylde and played his formative club cricket for Blackpool before becoming an ‘honorary’ Cumbrian. 

Cumbria have close links with Lancashire, who use Sedbergh School as one of their home venues, but also with Durham. Cumbria’s player/coach Paul Hindmarch and batter Gary Pratt both played for Durham and Ben Stokes also played his formative cricket for Cockermouth and in Cumbria’s age group teams before he joined Durham. 

Siddall now plays his club cricket for Cockermouth and he took the chance to pick the brains of England’s new Test captain when he returned to the Sandair ground to watch a match in June. 

“Ben came down to our game against Furness and he was absolutely brilliant,” Siddall said. 

“The weather was good we 1,000 or so spectators down and he stayed for the whole game. 

“Afterwards I had a chat with him to get a few pointers from him about the areas that he thought I could improve on. 

“We won and I had decent game so it was good just to get a bit of a lowdown from him. He’s an absolutely brilliant bloke.” 

Siddall’s eagerness to learn shows that he knows there is still room for improvement in his game and he would also like some of his outstanding individual performances to contribute to team success. Having beaten Northumberland at Tynemouth in their opening Championship match, Cumbria have since been beaten by Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire 

“Individual success is brilliant and it puts a lot more feathers in your cap. If you are winning games, brilliant,  but, if not,  then it’s about focusing on the areas that you could improve on,” he said. 

“I’m not where I want to be just yet. It’s all part and parcel of learning, getting better and doing stuff off the field that will benefit me. 

“It’s a team effort. We have had batted well but not well for long periods of time. We have had a couple of partnerships here and there. But instead of batting for five or ten overs, other teams have done it for 25-30 overs. But we are a young team we can only learn and build from the experiences this season.”