DARYL Mitchell wants to help to establish Worcestershire as a Division One side in County Championship cricket before the day comes when he finally hangs up his spikes.

The long-serving opener celebrates 15 years since making his first-class debut for the County this summer.

Mitchell has just extended his stay at Blackfinch New Road for two more years after signing a 12-month contract extension until the end of the 2021 campaign.

The 36-year-old recognises last season did not go as well as he would have wanted in a challenging year for the entire batting group.

But Mitchell still has that hunger and desire to succeed and takes confidence from a career record of more than 13,000 first-class runs at an average of nearly 40.

He said: “It is nice to sign on the dotted line again. I think it pretty much means I will finish my career here.

“It is nice to get a year extension and hopefully we can make some big strides. Obviously we’ve been very good in white-ball cricket in both formats during the last couple of years.

“We need to make some progress with the red ball and if I can finish and bow out my career with Worcestershire established as a Division One team that’s one of the goals for me over the next couple of years.

“It’s something I said to Fanos Hira (Worcestershire chairman) and Paul Pridgeon (cricket steering group chairman) when chatting with them.”

Mitchell continued: “I’ve still got that hunger for the game. Absolutely. I didn’t get quite as many runs as I would have wanted last year but still managed three hundreds across a couple of formats.

“I like scoring runs, I like contributing to wins. That’s the most important thing. I think we are all agreed that it was disappointing in red-ball cricket last year and that’s something we want to put right in 2020.

“Last year I see as a bit of a blip. I didn’t get as many runs as I would have liked. That’s fairly obvious and it was the same for the batting unit as a whole.

“But this is a new year isn’t it and come that first game at Lord’s I’ll be looking to make a hundred, the same as every other time I go out and bat.

“Hopefully I will take a lot of confidence from my career and the amount of runs I’ve scored and trust my method, trust the way I go about things and hopefully get off to a good start and maintain that throughout the season.”

Meanwhile, Moeen Ali has flown out to South Africa to join up with England’s white-ball squad for the forthcoming ODI and T20I series against the Proteas.

The all-rounder practised with his Worcestershire team-mates at Malvern College last week before switching his attention to international duty.

Moeen has been selected for the three ODIs and three T20Is as part of his first England squad since the summer Ashes series against Australia in which he played the first Test at Edgbaston.

England have two warm-up games against a Cricket South Africa Invitational XI on Friday and Saturday at Paarl.

The 32-year-old will be looking to add to his 101 ODI and 25 T20I appearances for his country since making his debut almost six years ago in the West Indies.

This winter Moeen, the County’s Vitality Blast captain, has played two games for Cape Town Blitz in the Mzansi Super League and six for Team Abu Dhabi in the Abu Dhabi T10 League.

Next month he will play for Multan Sultans as a platinum player in the Pakistan Super League in a competition being staged from February 20 until March 22.