Wayne Madsen believes the experience he will gain competing in the Pakistan Super League will hold him in good stead heading into Derbyshire’s Vitality Blast campaign next summer.
The 34-year-old was picked up by Peshawar Zalmi in the PSL draft and will join former teammate Wahab Riaz, as well as England internationals Dawid Malan, Chris Jordan and Liam Dawson at Peshawar in February.
The explosive batsman, who has scored 854 runs in the last two domestic Twenty20 campaigns for Derbyshire, is grateful for the recognition and opportunity to showcase his skills overseas, but also acutely aware of the benefits back at The County Ground.
He said: “It’s a great competition and for me to experience another competition in different conditions with world class players is going to be great, with the aim of showcasing my skills and winning games for the team.
“My skills against spin in particular will hopefully bode well and I’m really excited to test my skills against some of the best spinners around.
“My performances in T20 cricket have really improved in the last few years and I’ve found my niche role. It suits my game really well and I’ve bowled a few more overs in the last couple of years as well.
“In any sport if you perform and play well then you’ll get noticed so I’ve been blessed that this opportunity has come around.
“I think it’s important to play a high-level of cricket in the lead-up to the county season. But also experience of a new competition will also be really valuable going forward into the T20 with Derbyshire.
“It’s about testing your skills and taking back knowledge from the PSL which can help us next summer.”
Derbyshire narrowly missed out on a Finals Day appearance in 2017 after a century from Hampshire’s Shahid Afridi saw them knocked out in the quarter-finals, after a Club-record eight wins in the format.
Last season the Falcons started slowly but recovered to record some impressive wins, including back-to-back victories over Yorkshire Vikings, all signs for Madsen which point to improved performances and a team not far off from competing for silverware.
He added: “In the last couple of years we’ve played some excellent T20 cricket and we’ve shown signs of vast improvements in the format.
“We came up against an in-form Afridi in 2017 and that cost us. But we played well as a team and won some big games to get us in that position. This year we started slow but came back as a group and put in some really good performances.”
“Hopefully now with more experience as a team and Dave [Houghton] and Steve [Kirby] with the Club we can continue to progress.
“They’re quality coaches, as we have had over the past couple of years, and they’ll bring new ideas and that’ll add to the squad as we continue to learn and develop our own games in the search for wins to get us to Finals Day.”
With the tournament set to run from 14 February until 17 March, Madsen will return to The County Ground ahead of the start of the domestic season, which he believes Derbyshire need to start strongly for a chance of red ball success.
Madsen said: “It’s going to be crucial for us to get off to a good start in the red ball competition.
“It’s such a good opportunity to get up to Division One with three teams going up, so for us it’s important that we get off to the kind of start that we did last year.
“We got off to a very good start last year and if we can do that and maintain that throughout the red ball competition then we stand a good chance of competing towards the end to get promotion.”
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