Aussie swap for Papplewick & Linby and changes at Hucknall too as new season arrives

He has played some professional cricket in Australia including a few games for Tasmania and Victoria.

Club professional will be Nottinghamshire CCC's dual national South African batsman Matt Montgomery and also signed are Zimbabwa-born opening bowler Sakhu Ndlela from the Norfolk League, who is now on the Loughborough University cricket programme, and former Farnsfield batsman Matt Sisson from the Derby League.

Papplewick were narrowly pipped to the title by Cavaliers & Carrington last summer and ahead of Saturday's opener at home to Radcliffe on Trent, skipper Ben Trevor-Jones said: “We just need to focus on doing more of the same.

“I probably have to keep reminding myself we don't need to reinvent the wheel at all, just keep doing what we've been doing.

“I think it will be a different season – you can already tell that by the weather, having the wettest March in four years is probably going to change the start of the season with fewer high scores.

“You always start every season trying to win the title. We had a great season last season and ended up just 10 points short in second.

“You look back at the season and see you could have easily accumulated more than on win with a couple of things, maybe a combination of things we could have done better and certain things out of our control.”

Hucknall, who start the season at home to Attenborough, have added Dom Wheatley from Kimberley, Harrison Tagg from Cavaliers, and Daniel Blatherwick from Pudsey St Lawrence CC in Yorkshire to their ranks.

Their overseas player will be Namibian left handed batsman and leg spin bowler Nicol Loftie-Eaton.

“We got him through an agent,” said captain Sam Johnson.

“We told them what we wanted and they came back with a couple of different options.

“We then pursued Nicol who is already over here and settled in well and he can't wait to get going too.”

He added: “We have had a good winter recruitment-wise and trained pretty well.

“The aim has to be to continue to improve. We finished fifth last summer and did well so we want to finish top four this time. We have to try to improve.

“We are looking strong. We have added pretty well and we're ready to go. We just want the weather to stay away now.”