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“I’m immensely proud” – Sean praises his young squad
2024 was a year of what might have been for Somerset County Cricket Club.
Sean Dickson captained a young Metro Bank One Day Cup squad all the way to the final of the competition.
Unfortunately, they fell at the final hurdle against Glamorgan.
Despite the disappointment, Sean was full of praise for what the squad achieved throughout the competition.
Here is his review of the 2024 Metro Bank One Day Cup.
We started the season with the mindset that we were going to win the Metro Bank One Day Cup competition and were hopeful of putting ourselves in a good position because we had a good white ball squad from 2023.
The key for us however this summer was our bowlers staying fit. Last season we had a lot of injuries whereas this year we didn’t and we could utilise what we had in our squad to its full capacity.
The younger players in the team showed some huge promise and I am immensely proud of them. They want to be in the First XI in all formats and this is a great competition for them to showcase what they have and do it on the big stage, so they really got the bit between their teeth and a lot put their hands up
We got the season off to a flyer and were able to push on and experiment with our plans, so it was handy that we had the bowling options there and they could really express themselves.
We are built on being very passionate, driven and determined to win trophies although in previous seasons there had been heartache in the competition and we’d only won three games in 2023 and just a single game in 2022.
We wanted to win the competition and knew we had the backing to do it, but also realised it would be a mountain to climb. However, what we achieved just shows that when the Club is in a good place and momentum is in your favour you can do anything.
In 2023, even when we weren’t doing so well we had good numbers turning up to watch us play and this year was the same.
The fans came in to support us and they wore their hearts on their sleeves. The supporters love Somerset and all credit to them because we can’t do what we did without them.
The boys played brilliantly as a team and that was our main strength in addition to which there were so many great individual performances.
We were excited to go and play in the final at Trent Bridge, which would probably have been the biggest match that some of our players had appeared in.
When it was raining we had spoken about what the potential format of the day and the game may be, so we knew what was going to happen and we planned around that.
We know we would have been favourites if it was a 50-over game because we were playing so well in that format and had the plans to tackle the game.
Glamorgan came up with virtually their full T20 squad.We wanted to play and knew we had the opportunity to win some silverware for the Club.
We look back now and don’t regret the offer to play the T20 because we wanted to play a game of cricket and backed ourselves to do it.
The confidence I gained from captaining the side in 2023 put me in good stead to do the job last season and that’s only going to increase as the seasons go on.
The younger players in our squad are all getting more and more experienced and that definitely helped, but we will have to see what happens in 2025 and take it from there.
Having Jack Leach made such a big difference to the team and he was the backbone of the bowling attack. In addition, to be able to turn to someone with that huge amount of experience and know that he is going to do the job and do it well was a great asset to have, especially to me as the captain.
There were so many people who contributed, like Andy Umeed up top who has really come into his own in this format. James Rew, Lewis Goldsworthy, Archie Ogborne, and Archie Vaughan, I could carry on but it was just really good to see how the boys played and came through at the right time and grew in confidence.
It was an added bonus to get to the final and I’m immensely proud of all of the guys who played in the team.
