Tony Palladino is relishing coming up against some familiar faces ahead of the visit of Essex to The 3aaa County Ground.
Palladino, who began his career at Chelmsford before signing for Derbyshire ahead of the 2011 season, is set to face his old teammates in the LV= County Championship fixture which starts on Wednesday at 10.30am.
The 32-year-old says the squad are determined to finish the campaign well beginning with the visit of Essex.
“It’s always nice to play Essex and I still know a lot of the lads there. Hopefully we can get a good result against them and we will have a drink together after the game,” said Palladino.
“We want to finish well, we’ve not won a game at home this year so it would be good to win at least one of our two remaining fixtures.
“We’ve had some good chats after the last couple of games and it is a great opportunity for us in front of a home crowd to put what we have spoken about into action.
“I always enjoy bowling against good players, they have got a very good batting line-up which makes it more of a challenge and that’s what you want as a professional cricketer.
“It gives you a great feeling dismissing players of good quality and hopefully we can come and do the business tomorrow and for the next four days.”
Palladino believes the team have played some good cricket in stages of their four-day campaign, but inconsistency has meant that they haven’t produced as many wins as they would have liked.
“We have been inconsistent, we’ve played some very good cricket and some very bad cricket – we’ve been at both ends of the spectrum,” he added.
“We need to score more first innings runs and also we need to be more ruthless with the ball like we were at the back end of last year. There are plenty of things to work on.
“There have been some crazy sessions where we have lost a cluster of wickets or we have let teams get away from us by letting them score at a quick rate. It is a matter of bringing in those margins and being a lot stronger with our discipline.
“Our plan is when we’re not taking wickets to keep things tight and suffocate batsmen and we just haven’t done that enough this year. We’ve got a very promising bowling attack and hopefully after another year of learning we will be in a better position next season.
“It is a team game, first innings runs puts pressure on the opposition and having the likes of Hamish Rutherford and Neil Broom next season for all formats will help all of us.
“But we have two games left and it’s great opportunity for all us to end the season well ahead of some hard work before we start again next season.”
Derbyshire are back in home action on Wednesday 9 September for the start of the LV= County Championship fixture versus Essex. Supporters can save £4 by purchasing tickets in advance.
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