Match Preview: Lancashire Women vs Durham Women, Metro Bank One-Day Cup Women
Lancashire Women squad to face Durham:
Ellie Threlkeld (c&wk), Danielle Collins, Kate Cross, Sophie Ecclestone, Mahika Gaur, Eve Jones, Emma Lamb, Ailsa Lister, Katie Mack, Sophie Morris, Tara Norris, Grace Potts, Seren Smale
Match preview
Fi Morris has hailed the impact of Lancashire’s new women’s batting coach Clinton Perren, the former Queensland men’s batter who has long since settled in the county.
Australian Perren scored almost 8,000 all-format runs in a senior career between 1998 and 2009, including representing Australia A.
The now 50-year-old was also a prolific run-scorer across the local leagues in the North West from the late nineties up until last summer. He started and finished with Littleborough CC.
Perren has long been a presence at Emirates Old Trafford in various roles, and he worked with the Red Rose women’s batters on a consultancy basis last summer before a permanent appointment ahead of this as one of head coach Chris Read’s assistants.
Lancashire have started the season superbly, winning five of their opening seven games in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup and sitting second in the table behind Hampshire.
Should the Red Rose beat Durham at Blackpool tomorrow (10.30am), they could go top of the table ahead of the two-month break for the Vitality Blast.
A real feature of Lancashire’s start to their season has been impressing with the bat, both individually and team wise.
Openers Emma Lamb (493) and Eve Jones (361) are first and third on the leading run-scoring charts for the entire competition, while the Red Rose have overall looked good both batting first and chasing.
All-rounder Morris, who has a best score of 90 not out in 2025 to her name, said: “I think in the past with our batting, we’ve been a little bit lax and loose around how we’ve batted, but he’s really tightened that up and brought some real belief that we can score big runs and over 300 in the 50-over games.
“He’s really, really passionate about batting. You could ring him up at any time of day and he’ll talk batting with you.
“He’s a great guy who I worked really closely with all winter. I saw him for three batting sessions a week, so I got to know him pretty well. He’s brilliant. I absolutely love working with him.”
Reading-born Morris has also revealed how the Australian has made her think about the game differently.
“He’s actually quite a similar character to Ready - quite straight to the point,” she continued. “He’s very stats driven.
“It’s something I’ve not been brilliant at, the whole stats and analysis side of the game. We’re actually quite chalk and cheese in that sense. But it’s what I’ve needed.
“I always thought of myself as quite an instinct player. But sometimes that has let me down a little bit. So Clinton has taught me to think about the game a bit more and be a bit tighter.”
Perren is working alongside head coach Read, a former England men’s wicketkeeper-batter, Stephen Parry and Kyle Hogg, the ex-Lancashire spinner and seamer, and fielding coach Chris Chambers.
And Morris added: “If you want to improve all aspects of your game, you have to have a coach who is really passionate about that certain skill. It’s only going to benefit us as a team moving forwards.”
While Lancashire (22 points) head to the seaside only a point off top spot in the table, Durham’s start to the season has been more mixed. They are fifth having won three and lost four (14 points).
They are captained by England fringe batting all-rounder Hollie Armitage and have New Zealand batting legend Suzie Bates as their overseas player for the summer.
Emerging all-rounder Phoebe Turner is the joint leading wicket-taker in the competition having taken 14 wickets with her seamers.
She claimed a match-winning six wickets for Northern Diamonds against Thunder at Southport last September in the regional Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy competition.
Armitage is their leading run-scorer with 319 from seven matches, including three fifties.
Ex-England off-spinner Dani Hazell, who represented Lancashire Thunder in the old Kia Super League, is Durham’s coach.
Both sides made it through to the quarter-finals of the Vitality County T20 Cup competition at the weekend. Durham beat Somerset via a Super Over following a tie at Exmouth on Friday, while Lancashire beat Glamorgan at Brecon yesterday.