Naik

Every morning you have two choices: continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase them. 

Jigar Naik had a long, successful playing career with Leicestershire County Cricket Club and returned as Pathway Coach and Spin Bowling Coach.

As well as passing on his vast experience and knowledge to the club’s professional spinners, Naik will develop the considerable young talent in the club’s Academy.

Naik will also be responsible for scouting players within the local community and club cricket as well as the National Counties, a competition he knows well from a spell playing and coaching at Dorset.

The first Leicester-born Asian to represent the club in first-class cricket, Naik took almost 250 wickets and scored more than 2,000 runs across all formats for the Running Foxes and received his county cap in 2013.

The off-spinner finished as Leicestershire’s leading first-class wicket-taker in 2011, took 3 for 3 in a T20 game at Yorkshire and played in the Final against Somerset. He was rewarded for his efforts by being named as one of the ECB’s Potential England Performance Programme players.

It built on a superb 2010 campaign where Naik finished top of the national bowling averages after claiming 35 first-class wickets at an average of 17.59. Naik’s finest hour came at the Oval, where he took a career-best seven for 96 to bowl the hosts out in their second innings. The haul helped him to share the John Josephs Award for best performance in the First XI along with James Taylor.

In 2009, Naik memorably made his maiden first-class century against Derbyshire as part of a game-saving stand with Taylor. The duo set an all-time club record for the eighth wicket on that occasion.