Ryan Sidebottom hoping for three more seasons with Yorkshire

Veteran seam bowler Ryan Sidebottom is targeting another three seasons with Yorkshire before heading into retirement.

Sidebottom is 37 on Thursday and three more years in the county game would see him reach 20 as a professional, most of them spent at Headingley.

He also begins the 2015 season in April with two personal milestones in sight - 700 wickets in first-class cricket and 1,000 in all forms of the game.

“I’m still enjoying the training and the games, and I want to carry on playing for as long as possible,” Sidebottom told the Northern Echo.

“In an ideal world, I would love to do 20 years in county cricket, I really would. To do that, 20 years as a professional, it would be an unbelievable achievement. That would be another three years, to 2017.

“That would be nice, but I can’t realistically look that far ahead. I’ve just got to take one year at a time and see how the body is, how I’m bowling and how I’m contributing to the team.

“Being a senior player, I want to be helping the young lads as well as taking wickets. That’s my job.”

Sidebottom, who starred in Yorkshire's Championship-sealing win over his former employers Nottinghamshire in September, has taken 663 first-class wickets and 954 overall but he says landmarks are becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on.

“You don’t really look at milestones,” he added. “If I do it, great, I’d be chuffed to bits. 1,000 wickets professionally and 700 first-class would be a nice achievement. It would be better to do that in a winning team, though.

“I must admit, I’d like to get 800 before I finish, putting myself up there with Darren Gough and people like that. But enjoying my cricket is most important. If I do that, the wickets and milestones will come naturally.

“To start well and contribute to the team is what we’ll need if we’re going to be missing a few players early on due to the international stuff.”