The team spirit in the sky for D'Oliveira's Pears

Brett D'Oliveira is in his third season since succeeding Joe Leach as Pears captain

Worcestershire began the 2024 season without a home ground. Almost without a future.

Within a month, it got worse.

Much worse, when they suffered a tragedy beyond imagination when they lost one of their most promising young players, Josh Baker at the age of just 20, who died overnight in the middle of a second XI match.

Time is, as always, a great healer though.

And, by season's end, carried along by a genuine team spirit, largely forged by Baker's memory, the Pears had pulled off one of the most memorable seasons in their history.

Never mind their five previous County Championship triumphs or seven one-day trophies, finishing in sixth in the top flight - their highest placing since coming third to Glamorgan in 1997 - is an achievement to match any of them.

"You always want to finish as high as you can but we had that goal that we wanted to create history," Pears captain Brett D'Oliveira told BBC Sport.

For most of the counties in English cricket's top flight, winning is what counts.

For county cricket clubs like Worcestershire, especially now, without the direct lucrative revenue stream of being international cricket hosts or as home to a Hundred franchise, it is more about mere survival. Especially for a club whose very home - and a much-loved River Severn-side home at that - has been so threatened by flooding.

“It is an individual sport, but played as a team," said the Pears' much admired first-team coach Alan Richardson - as well respected, well liked and as key a figure as the club's chief executive Ashley Giles. "And it’s really important the team work well together.

"I use the word character a lot but we’ve needed that in abundance this year. We've also needed a great captain in Brett, who has been a vital part in what we've managed to do. In fact we couldn't have done it without him."

The fact is though, the sign of any really good team is coming to the end of a summer and realising just how hard a job it is choosing a player of the season.

The Pears produced real run-scorers - Kashif Ali (767), Jake Libby (710), Gareth Roderick (695), D'Oliveira himself (518), including four key half-centuries in a row, the first three of them match-winners when the County Championship returned from its seven-week break.

But a better measure was how runs came all the way down the order - from all-rounders Matthew Waite, Ethan Brookes, Tom Taylor and their two foreign imports over the first half of the summer, Jason Holder and Nathan Smith, who did so well that he has now reportedly lined up to join Pears old boy Gareth Batty's triple champions Surrey.

Wickets were spread about too - 27 each for Smith, Taylor and the retiring Joe Leach, 19 for Waite, 17 for Adam Finch, 14 for on-loan Surrey spinner Amar Virdi, 13 for Logan van Beek, nine for Holder, eight for Brookes and Ben Gibbon, and seven for on-loan Essex all-rounder Ben Allison, who will move to New Road permanently next season.

All missed bits of the campaign because of injuries - but it was the permanent loss of one of their number, young Baker, that maybe had the most lasting effect - as Worcestershire's ongoing spirit in the sky.

"We've got a great team spirit," D'Oliveira said. "But it's when times are really tough you find out a lot about people. And we've just got some tremendous individuals at this club, from the bottom to the very top.

"It was quite emotional in our season debrief. We had to bear Josh in mind, as we have done throughout the summer."

Team-mate Roderick put the tears behind him when he hit a fine century at Canterbury in the Pears' first game back after the tragic loss of Baker and admitted: "We certainly felt his presence with us. The boys could all feel him sitting on our shoulders up in the dressing room."

Gareth Roderick dedicated his century to Josh Baker at Canterbury in May - in the first particularly emotional match after the young spinner's death

"Josh's spirit has been there for us throughout the whole season," said D'Oliveira about the young man who will now forever remain the Pears' number 33.

"His mum and dad Paul and Lisa have been tremendous throughout the whole process. And, in many ways, they have given us motivation and inspiration.

"They've got nothing but love and time for everyone in the dressing room. And it works both ways. We've always welcomed them in and always will. I can't begin to imagine what they've gone through."

He added: "That game at Canterbury was very emotional. People were in tears. And there we were going out to play a game of cricket. But the way Gareth Roderick handled it, in making that century the way he did, set the tone and we've managed to carry that on.

"To play the cricket we have done is what Josh would have wanted. And it's a sign of a really good team that everyone has chipped in.

"When we've gone up in the past, it's been helped by various guys from overseas coming in. Saeed Ajmal in 2011 was an absolute genius. Daryl Mitchell played a huge part in taking us up and keeping us up with so many 1,000-run seasons.

"This time nobody has had an outstanding season where you think, 'Wow.' But, as a collective, we've stood up. Whether it's a great catch, a great stop on the boundary, runs or wickets, there just have been so many good moments, when you feel that somebody's got your back."