MATCH PREVIEW: Lancashire v Leicestershire Foxes
Lancashire’s 50-over campaign continues at pace, with tomorrow’s floodlit clash with Leicestershire marking the halfway point in the group phase.
Lancashire v Leicestershire Foxes
Metro Bank One-Day Cup, Group One
Friday August 11, 2023, 2pm
Emirates Old Trafford
Despite this, Keaton Jennings and co have so far only completed one fixture - yesterday’s comprehensive win over champions Kent Spitfires at Blackpool by 125 runs, highlighted by a Josh Bohannon century and four wickets for Jack Blatherwick.
Frustrations following rain are obvious, but Lancashire are encouragingly placed second in the table on four points - one behind leaders Nottinghamshire.
Leicestershire sit just behind them in third, also with four points - their haul accrued via two wins and a defeat.
The top three in each group qualify for the knockout stages later this month.
Opponents:
Leicestershire have had a funny old season across all formats.
It started with a County Championship victory over Yorkshire at Headingley in early April when they chased down 393 on the final day to win by three wickets with seven balls to spare.
They remain in the promotion picture heading into next month, but they finished bottom of the Vitality Blast North Group with only two wins from 14 games and have dispensed of the services of long-standing coach Paul Nixon, the ex-England white ball wicketkeeper-batter.
Another former international trio are currently in charge.
Ex-England batter James Taylor is coaching the side on an interim basis alongside former South Africa bowler Alfonso Thomas. Another former Protea, the spinner Claude Henderson is their director of cricket.
The Foxes are one of four counties to only have lost two players to the Hundred - spin duo Rehan Ahmed and Callum Parkinson.
They are captained by wicketkeeper-batter Lewis Hill and have Australian Peter Handscomb and South African Wiaan Mulder as their overseas pair.
They won their first two games before losing to Nottinghamshire at home on Tuesday.
In the first game against Surrey at the Oval, they chased 326 to win by five wickets. In the second, they amassed 380-5 against champions Kent at Canterbury and defended it to win by 264 runs.
Seamers Tom Scriven (5-66) and Roman Walker (6-43) recorded their maiden senior five-wicket hauls in the respective fixtures.
Surprisingly, despite two big totals, no Foxes batter has yet posted a century.
Opposing player to watch:
Leicestershire are fielding not far of a full strength team in the MB50, hence a bucketload of experience. Colin Ackermann, Lewis Hill, Wiaan Mulder and Chris Wright all fall into that category.
So too does Australian fringe Test wicketkeeper batter Peter Handscomb, who is playing for his fifth English county.
Durham, Gloucestershire, Middlesex and Yorkshire are the others.
Handscomb only initially signed for the first two months of the season, but he has ended up staying around in the East Midlands to play in all competitions.
They had signed India’s Ajinkya Rahane for the middle part of the season, but he ended up not coming.
A busy batter who is not without power, the Victorian is excellent against spin and has scored 1,011 runs across all competitions this summer, including two hundreds.
The 32-year-old has played 44 times for Australia across all formats, including 20 Tests and 22 one-day internationals. But he was not part of their Ashes summer plans.
Previous meeting:
These two counties have not met in List A cricket since April 2019 when Lancashire claimed a thumping One-Day Cup win at Emirates Old Trafford, by nine wickets chasing 81.
In all, the contest lasted only 56 overs, and it was early in a campaign which saw the Red Rose reach the semi-finals, where they were beaten by Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl.
Jimmy Anderson played for Lancashire and returned 1-27 from 10 overs. But it was Saqib Mahmood who starred with a stunning 5-14 from 10 as the Foxes crumbled to 80 all out.
Mahmood’s second successive five-for came against a Foxes team including five Lancastrians. Paul Horton captained them and opener Harry Dearden, now skippering Cheshire in National Counties cricket, was the only man to reach 20.
Haseeb Hameed (29) and Steven Croft (37) shared an unbroken 67 for the second wicket to lead a routine chase.
What they said:
Yesterday’s centurion Josh Bohannon, who made a superb 105, has hailed the development of opener George Bell, who made an excellent 71 against Kent.
The pair shared 112 for the second wicket to underpin a commanding 328-5, also including fifties for Dane Vilas and George Balderson.
It was Bell’s List A best score and the 20-year-old’s third fifty in all first-team cricket - the other two coming in the County Championship.
Bohannon said: “He’s a great talent. He’s got a great head on his shoulders, and he works hard. He knows where his game’s at, and for him to get some reward against Kent is really exciting moving forwards for the rest of the summer because there’s a lot of cricket left.
“On him as a person, he’s a fiery character who has that grit and determination to do well. When it does get tough, he wants to stand up and score the runs. I think he’s got an extremely bright future for the club.”
Lancashire’s next two - and final two - home games of this 50-over group stage are now at Emirates Old Trafford.
Bohannon added: “It will be nice to be back at our ground, especially for the young lads who haven’t played there that much. It will be a nice feeling for them. It’s exciting.
“Leicestershire are a good side, and we’ll have to bring our A game to get the two points.
“We’ve not played white ball cricket for a while now, and for us to string 50 overs together as a batting unit and the way we bowled, it’s really exciting. It was a great all-round performance.
“Like any comp - especially white ball cricket, it’s always nice when you get a bit of momentum. The scoreboard (Kent) will send out a bit of message as to the way we play our cricket. That’s the sort of performance we want to do regularly.”
How’s Stat!
Quirky maybe, but yesterday’s innings of 105 off 117 balls from Josh Bohannon took him to 1,000 balls faced across 33 matches in his List A career.
In that time, he has scored 788 runs at an average of 32.83.