Ed Pollock set to leave Warwickshire with New Road beckoning

Ed Pollock, the Warwickshire top-order batter, looks set to join Worcestershire as he searches for more regular first-team cricket.

Pollock, 26, has one of the highest career strike rates in the world in T20 cricket (160.96) but was a surprise omission from Birmingham Bears' T20 Blast quarter-final defeat to Kent last week.

Pollock is out of contract at the end of the season - he signed a one-year extension at the end of last year - and is yet to be offered a new deal by Warwickshire. He has been in discussion with the club throughout the summer and while it remains a possibility that they will make him an offer, he is expected to leave at this stage.

Worcestershire appears to be a logical destination for Pollock and he has been speaking to the club in the last week. He plays club cricket for Barnt Green, near Bromsgrove, and was part of the club's age-group set-up as a teenager. Two of their T20 regulars - Riki Wessels and Ross Whiteley - have recently left the club and given he was not picked up in the first season of the Hundred, they would expect him to be available throughout the Royal London Cup.

Pollock has had a mixed season in 2021. He was the Bears' third-highest run-scorer in the Blast and finished the tournament with a strike rate of 144.11 but was left out of the side for the quarter-final against Kent in favour of Rob Yates, the 21-year-old who was playing only the ninth T20 of his career. He made a maiden Warwickshire hundred in the Royal London Cup against Derbyshire but did not reach 50 in his other seven innings in the competition.