Essex coach Paul Grayson is hoping that the cold weather will not prove too much of a hindrance to his side when they kick off their season next week.
Their first game is a three-day friendly with Cambridge UCCE at Fenners starting next Friday, having seen a scheduled friendly at Chelmsford against Worcestershire called off.
The players did manage to get some pre-season action with a pair of one-day games with Middlesex last week in bitterly-cold conditions, but despite losing the game with Worcestershire, Grayson remains upbeat.
"We had two good days against Middlesex," he said. "Even though it was freezing cold, that was good practice.
"It's just unfortunate, you can't beat the weather in our game. It shouldn't affect us too much because we've still got time to practice at home and then we've got Fenners as well starting on Friday.
"Everyone's working hard and they look in good form and things are progressing nicely.
"All batsmen like time in the middle, you can have all the nets you want but the match situation and fields are a better indicator for the players, but they've had plenty of hits in the marquee over the past three weeks.
"We've been lucky enough that we've been outside on the grass nets which has been excellent practice.
"It's our second year with it and it's worked really well. We enjoyed it last year and we thought it helped with our preparations for last season.
"It's very similar conditions to what we're going to come across in the next few weeks and our practice pitches are really good."
Grayson has welcomed Saj Mahmood into the fold over pre-season, and he believes he will have a big role to play this season.
"He's in that middle ground really," he added. "You've got [David] Masters and [Graham]Napier in their mid-30s and the other lads are really young, [Reece] Topley and [Tymal] Mills, and Maurice [Chambers] is 25, 26 and has played a bit of cricket now.
"But it's nice to get someone in that 30-bracket, we'll get some good years out of him hopefully and the balance of the bowling attack is good.
"We've got experience and a bit of youth. Hopefully we can pick the right combination and keep them fit.
"Bowling is the hardest part about being a county cricketer, the workload that they do so it's really important that we have those sort of numbers because at some stage we are going to get injuries."
