{"id":541653,"date":"2026-04-20T20:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T20:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/541653\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T20:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T20:40:08","slug":"somerset-best-start-in-seven-years-stemmed-from-cancelled-abu-dhabi-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/541653\/","title":{"rendered":"Somerset: Best start in seven years &#8216;stemmed from cancelled Abu Dhabi trip&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Historically we&#8217;ve always looked to get on grass overseas, and we&#8217;ve really enjoyed some fantastic experiences and opponents out in Abu Dhabi. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But obviously with the things going on at the moment that wasn&#8217;t possible, so we had to adjust at very short notice and get ourselves out to Desert Springs [resort] in Spain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s been a huge amount of work from the head coach [Jason Kerr] and the support staff around how we can take ourselves from what we have been achieving to the next level.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A draw at home to champions Nottinghamshire in their first match was followed by a comprehensive 10-wicket win away at Essex, before the tense victory at Southampton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hurry told BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra: &#8220;A really tough fixture against Nottinghamshire, and the victory at Chelmsford, gave us some good momentum. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;A combination of those games, and the pre-season, [meant that] at Hampshire, we were really well prepared for that fight.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;Historically we&#8217;ve always looked to get on grass overseas, and we&#8217;ve really enjoyed some fantastic experiences and opponents&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-541653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}