Alex Gidman has revealed how a "return to basics" helped revive his fortunes with the bat.

Once regarded as a potential England player, Gidman dropped out of the international reckoning altogether when suffering a dramatic loss of form last year.

Not only did the runs dry up for the current Gloucestershire captain, but his confidence was also affected, his barren spell mirroring the struggles of the team as a whole.

Instead of retreating to lick his wounds, the former MCC Young Cricketer decided to analyse every aspect of his performance and reconstruct his technique during the winter months.

And the measures he took have yielded a bountiful harvest in 2009. Gidman is by some distance Gloucestershire's leading run scorer in all cricket and, with two County Championship matches still to negotiate, is closing in on a notable personal milestone.

The career-best 176 he made in a winning cause against Surrey last week means he goes into tomorrow's penultimate match against Glamorgan in Cardiff with 914 first-class runs to his name.

"Scoring 1,000 first-class runs is still the benchmark for a good season for any batsman," said Gidman. "To have a chance of reaching that milestone is something I am driven by personally. If I don't achieve it against Glamorgan in the next few days, I'll hopefully get there in our final game against Kent."

He said: "Everyone goes through bad patches in a career and, unfortunately, mine came over a full season last year.

"I learned a huge amount about myself and my game during that period so, in a stupid kind of way, I'm glad I went through it. I don't know if the captaincy made a difference, but I couldn't make a decent score no matter how hard I tried.

"I worked massively hard on my batting during the winter and in the build-up to this season. I virtually stripped it down and started again.

"I needed to go back to basics and I spent a lot of time watching videos and looking at the statistics when I had scored hundreds in the past."