DORSET skipper Chris Park reflected on a season in which his charges grew in character throughout the summer, and exceeded all expectations.

Having taken the reigns replacing all-rounder Tom Hicks this term, the 31-year-old, who skippered the side on a stand-in basis when they won the Minor Counties Championship final in 2010, expressed his delight in the way his side had turned things around to bounce back from their sombre summer of 2013.

Park told Echosport: “It was a start of a new era with me taking over as captain and we sat down and thought out a few plans and set some milestones of what we wanted to achieve.”

Having failed to get out of their Unicorns Knockout Trophy group with just one win, Park then looked for his side to switch gears and focus on the three-day format.

With a thumping loss inside two days at home to Devon and a further defeat to Wiltshire, things looked as if they were getting no better for Dorset, and they seemed set to go yet another campaign without a Championship win.

But Park saw a spark in his side in their third contest in the longer format at Herefordshire, as they dug in thanks to a match-winning knock of 77 by Ryan Scott, son for Middlesex head coach Richard Scott, to give them their first three-day win in two years.

“Things just all clicked into place in that game,” Park added.

“Tom Hicks took a heap of wickets with a broken finger and Ryan played that match-winning innings, and from there it just snowballed.”

A draw in which Dorset came agonisingly close to winning against Oxfordshire then followed, and Park’s troops rallied by emerging victorious in their final two contests to finish fifth in the Unicorns Counties Championship Western Division, and unbeaten in their last four outings.

Park added: “For the last three or four games I didn’t feel like we were ever going to lose and that was really pleasing.

“There was definitely a camaraderie towards the end of the season that we weren’t going to get beat and we were going to fight to the death for each other.”

That grit and determination was amplified by players’ player of the season and top run-scorer Masoor Khan, pictured right, who accumulated vital runs to ensure his place back in the ranks.

“He was dropped at the beginning of the Championship season when we had the Somerset boys available which was obviously harsh,” Park said.

“He is a great bloke and a great character, he realised he had to be left out and he came back in and got his reward with his runs at the back end of the season.”

And on the subject of scoring runs, Park is hopeful that Dorset record-breaking batsman Chris Jones, who announced his retirement from first-class cricket last month at the age of 23 to pursue a career outside of the game, will be a feature of his squad next season.

“Chris has obviously retired from first-class cricket and is a Corfe Mullen boy, I know him very well,” the skipper claimed.

“We have already had a conversation with him and mentioned that we would love to have him back on board, we will know more about it over the winter.

“If Chris was to become available for the whole season or even just the Championship games, he would be a great bloke and a great player to have so fingers crossed, he wants to do it again.

“Whether it is next season or even the year after I have no doubt that he will play for Dorset in the future.”

The current captain will wait until later in the year to see if he is to be re-elected in the role for 2015, and he wants to build on what he has started with the side’s recent development.

Park added: “We have already started planning and had a committee meeting already and I’d relish taking the job again and will look for some more improvement over the next few years.”