...Cricket Academy, a locally-qualified associate player, or a foreign player on a UK passport
Shaw should be a very useful bowler for our white-ball sides, but there is work to do if we are going to have a bowling attack that's capable of challenging for the CC next year.
Hopefully there are more signings coming, and presumably at least one, if not two, overseas slots will be used for quality red-ball pace bowlers (possibly Migael Pretorius again)
There's also the possibility of a slightly more unorthodox route - eg the South Asian...
We rightly have high hopes for young bowlers like Alfie Ogborne, JT Langridge, Joe Heywood etc but they may well end up being asked to do too much, too soon
(although whatever the situation with signings I really hope Ogborne plays more regularly in CC and Blast next year)
It seems that we did try to sign other bowlers, but none of them joined us for whatever reason. It's a bit worrying that, despite being a consistently successful county, we can't attract anyone better than Shaw.
He may get into our first-choice T20 side, possibly as Green's replacement (which would involve rebalancing the side) or in one of the slots taken by Meredith and Henry this year. It will depend on who we sign as overseas players for T20 next year.
Think Josh Shaw will be a good signing for Somerset's T20 and 50 over sides. His recent record in those formats is decent and, while they'll both be at the club for at least a season, he'll probably take over Jake Ball's role as a dependable senior bowler
I'll have to look into it. I don't think many counties will say they're completely happy with their opening partnership but ours is surely one of the worst ones in terms of batting average
...don't get into our first-choice middle order - from getting a game as a makeshift opener. And as we have seen this season, players aren't necessarily going to stay if they know they can get more regular cricket elsewhere.
Going forward, the most pressing need is pace bowlers - we undoubtedly need another domestic red-ball option, as well as the usual overseas bowler or two
We will need to decide whether to sign two overseas bowlers, or one overseas bowler and an overseas opening batter
Somerset are traditionally slow starters, but we did win our first two games in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and our first one in 2021. Since then we've reverted to the norm
If we can find a way to hit the ground running again we should be able to mount a better title challenge
Another issue was the slow start to the season. I don't know if failing to get over the line against Worcestershire was a factor, but we really struggled in the following three games (all away), with two bad losses and an uncompetitive draw
