JOHN Crawley is putting Shaun Udal's name forward to captain Hampshire when Shane Warne is unavailable next year.

Crawley led Hampshire to totesport National League promotion last season.

But Will Kendall and Udal skippered the county when Warne was playing for Australia this summer.

And with Kendall now retired, Crawley, who also oversaw Hampshire's second from bottom finish in the championship in 2003, reckons Udal is the obvious choice.

He said: "Will did a pretty good job and so did Shaun. Unfortunately Will is no longer with us so I would have thought that the logical choice would be for Shaggy to do it, that's probably the way we'll go."

Crawley, who is in his third season with Hampshire, has noticed all round improvement in the side.

He added: "Everyone can look at their performance can say they've done better than last year, which is a very good sign.

"We've played some really good cricket throughout the year and have enjoyed ourselves, we've performed a litte more consistently than we have in the past.

"We've batted better than we have done and have bowled extremely well in both forms of cricket.

"The batters have played on pretty tough wickets but we've still put the side in positions where we can win the game.

"And when that hasn't happened, the tail end has put us into a position the batsmen should have done in the first place.

"We've played really well in the championship throughout the year.

"I don't feel we've played as well as we can in one-day cricket but with a bit more consistency we're very capable of winning the National League next year."

Crawley, free of the burdens of captaincy, is just one Hampshire player to enjoy a much better championship season in 2004 than last year.

In 2003 he only averaged 33.76 - this season he is averagin 54.43, a figure boosted by a career best unbeaten 301 at Trent Bridge in July, the third highest individual score in the county's history.