LV= County Championship: Alex Gidman to leave Gloucestershire and join Worcestershire

Alex Gidman will end his long association with Gloucestershire at the end of the season to join Worcestershire on a two-year deal.

The 33-year-old has spent his career to date at Bristol, scoring 23 first-class hundreds and managing nearly 17,000 runs in all forms of cricket for the county who handed him his debut in 2002.

We are getting someone who is still performing at the very best of his career.

Gidman, who managed a career-best 264 in the current LV= County Championship fixture against Leicestershire, also captained Gloucestershire between 2009 and 2012.

However he will now join a Worcestershire squad that got to see the right-handed batsman's talents very closely last month, as he made 145 in helping his current employers to victory at New Road.

"If you look at some of the recent innings he has played, they have been quite outstanding," Worcester director of cricket Steve Rhodes said.

"We are getting someone who is still performing at the very best of his career.

"We need a middle-order player with experience who our young players can play around and learn from.

"At the moment our experienced batters are Moeen Ali and Daryl Mitchell and with Moeen’s potential future England commitments increasing, to have Alex as another experienced senior batter in the category of Daryl and Moeen can only be a benefit."

Gloucestershire had already announced that Alex's younger brother Will would be moving on at the end of the campaign, the all-rounder having agreed a three-year contract to join Nottinghamshire.