SIMON Katich arrives in Hampshire later this week in fine form ahead of his scheduled county debut against former club Yorkshire next week.

The 25-year-old New South Wales batsman flies into Heathrow in the early hours of Friday after the completion of Australia A's series with their South African counterparts Down Under.

While his new county colleagues will be playing against Glamorgan in Cardiff, Katich will meet the press at The Rose Bowl.

Katich has been skippering his country against the Proteas and only this week showed the sort of form Hampshire cricket followers will be hoping helps them to promotion in both forms of the game this summer.

The left-hander smacked a superb unbeaten 134 in the second innings of the thrilling drawn game with South Africa A in Perth.

Katich - who was scoring his 16th first class century - put on 274 for the second wicket with former Northants run-maker Michael Hussey (145) before declaring their second innings on 307 for 2.

He took 19 off one over from Albie Morkel in the process.

That set South Africa a 306 victory target, which they almost achieved before bad light stopped play.

Martin van Jaarsveld thrashed 140 off only 150 balls as his side fell just four runs short of their victory target.

Katich will almost certainly make his debut against Yorkshire, for whom he played a handful of matches last season, at The Rose Bowl in a four-day championsip match starting next Wednesday.

It will be his second full season of English domestic cricket after he scored over 1,000 runs for Durham in 2000 at a 43.56 average, including three centuries and five fifties.

Following his century earlier this week, Katich's first-class career average now stands at 46.70.

Hampshire skipper John Crawley was preparing to open the innings against Glamorgan at Cardiff today in the absence of Jimmy Adams, who is on Loughborough University duties.

Glamorgan will be without Australian Michael Kasprowicz due to thigh and knee problems respectively.

David Harrison, who narrowly missed out on selection against Derbyshire, and slow left-armer Dean Cosker are added to the squad

Coach John Derrick said: "Robert Croft bowled 80-odd overs against Derbyshire, which is amazing for an off-spinner in the first game of the season. He did magnificently but we are going to go into this match with two spinners."