WORCESTERSHIRE director of cricket Steve Rhodes has played down reports the county are trying to sign Sri Lanka wicketkeeper Prasanna Jayawardene as their overseas player for the first half of next season.
The Royals have already secured the services of Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan for the second part of the 2010 campaign and need a new keeper to replace England’s Steve Davies, who has moved to Surrey.
But Rhodes revealed Worcestershire may look to bring in a keeper on loan until 17-year-old Ben Cox, who recently signed a four-year contract, is available in July after school commitments.
Rhodes said: “I do admire Jayawardene. He is a wonderful keeper and can certainly score runs as well but it (any interest from Worcestershire) is news to me.
“We could go down the overseas route with the keeper but there are plenty out there and we could go down the loan route.
“There are a lot of decent keepers who are not going to get a start in the first team of their counties and that could be a wise way of using the loan system.
“If you look at football, it happens quite a lot with keepers. Joe Hart is on loan at Birmingham and Ben Foster did the same at Watford.
“There is only one goalkeeper and one wicketkeeper that can play and sometimes some counties and clubs have got more than one decent one so you can pick up some decent loan keepers.”
Rhodes admitted the departure of England Lions opening batsman Stephen Moore to Lancashire enabled the county to have the finances to reverse their original decision not to pursue an overseas capture for 2010.
He said: “We had to make cuts and you’ve got to tighten up and ride out the storm of the recession. We’ve had some huge cuts on the playing budget as well as other budgets.
“We didn’t originally budget for an overseas player because we didn’t know at that stage Stephen Moore was not going to be with us and we didn’t find out until after the end of the season.
“It did mean we could free up a little bit of money to go down the overseas route.”
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