MATCH PREVIEW: Northamptonshire Steelbacks v Lancashire Lightning
This promises to be quite the clash upon the return of the Vitality Blast following the fortnight’s break for Championship cricket.
Northamptonshire Steelbacks v Lancashire Lightning
Vitality Blast, North Group
Friday July 4, 2025, 6.30pm
Wantage Road
Northamptonshire sit top of the North Group on 24 points having won six of eight games so far, Lancashire sit second on 20 having won five from seven.
A win for the Lightning in this one, and they will almost certainly go top of the group with six games to play given they have a superior net run-rate in comparison to the Steelbacks.
Durham and Leicestershire could threaten that with massive wins of their own.
Safe to say, though, a third straight win for the Lightning and they will be in a fabulous position following most recent successes away at Worcestershire and Derbyshire last month.
Northamptonshire won the first six group games to streak ahead at the top of the table, but they have lost their last two - at home to Durham and Nottinghamshire.
Opposition
Northamptonshire, like Lancashire, are aiming to qualify for back-to-back quarter-finals. They were beaten at home by Somerset last season, as the Red Rose were beaten away at Sussex.
These two counties met in the 2015 final at Edgbaston, which the Lightning won.
The Steelbacks are two-time winners of this competition, in 2013 and 2016.
Captain David Willey played in the first of those and claimed the player-of-the-match award in the final against Surrey at Edgbaston. By the time 2016 came along, he had signed for Yorkshire.
The former England all-rounder is now back at Wantage Road again and is leading a similar charge alongside former Australia national coach Darren Lehmann.
Willey is having a super campaign. He is their leading run-scorer with 236 runs and has chipped in with 13 wickets with his left-arm swingers.
They will be without South African opener Matthew Breetzke for this one because of Test Match duty in Zimbabwe, but Australian leg-spinner Lloyd Pope remains. He has taken seven wickets in eight matches.
Experienced seamer Ben Sanderson is their leading wicket-taker with 21 to his name.
Opposition player to watch
New-ball seamer Ben Sanderson is having the campaign in which he will surely bring up 100 career appearances in T20 cricket.
Aged 36, Sanderson’s 21 wickets from eight matches is the best haul by any bowler in this season’s competition. That includes a stunning haul 6-8 in a win over Worcestershire at New Road early last month. He finished the game off with a hat-trick.
Sanderson, Sheffield-born, is not the quickest bowler in the world by any stretch, but he has skill in abundance. He is similar to Sir James Anderson in many ways.
He is best known for his exploits with the red ball, but he has one of the key factors in why the Steelbacks are on course of the quarter-finals and a third Blast title.
He is currently sat on 96 career T20 appearances and has 123 wickets to his name.
It will be of no surprise to learn that the aforementioned 6-8 was a career best return.
Previous meeting
In early June, Northamptonshire beat Lancashire by 24 runs at Emirates Old Trafford to secure their fifth successive victory at the start of the 2025 Vitality Blast.
Having posted 180-6, in which skipper David Willey top-scored with 37, tall seamer George Scrimshaw led the way with career best figures of 4-19 from his four overs as the Lightning finished on 156-9.
Lancashire suffered their second defeat in a row having won their first three in the North Group.
Jimmy Anderson claimed 3-31 for the Red Rose, but a series of useful contributions - Willey’s was the best of them - carried the visitors to an imposing total in a game which marked Liam Livingstone’s return to county colours having won the IPL with Bangalore.
Unfortunately, however, the task was too great for the Red Rose, who slipped to 16-2 early on and lost wickets too regularly.
Livingstone hit two sixes in a brisk 18 but fell to Australian leg-spinner Lloyd Pope, while Michael Jones’s innings-high 32 from number six was ended by Scrimshaw.
What they said
Sir James Anderson has got the T20 bug!
After 11 years away, Jimmy has slotted back into the fast and furious white-ball format seamlessly, taking 10 wickets in four matches with a trio of three-fors.
The 42-year-old fast-bowling legend has been a key component in the county’s progress to second place in the North Group at the halfway stage of the campaign.
His 3-17 in victory over Durham at the Banks Homes Riverside represented a career best haul in that format.
Anderson could, this weekend, bring up his 50th career T20 appearance given the Red Rose have back-to-back games against Northamptonshire away and then Derbyshire at Emirates Old Trafford on Saturday.
Not that he’s banking on it, mind you.
Anderson said: “We’ve got a really strong squad now. The likes of Saqib Mahmood and Luke Wood are coming back after their England duty. I’m unsure how much I’ll play in the rest of it, but hopefully I’ll contribute if I’m asked.
“I’ve loved it. I’ve loved every minute of it.
“I didn’t expect to really play that much, but to play four out of seven games was great.
“To actually contribute and take some wickets was, again, great.”
How’s Stat!
Lancashire’s Blast captain Keaton Jennings is sat on 299 runs from seven matches in 2025, a haul which is the joint third best in the competition alongside Somerset’s Will Smeed.
Only Yorkshire skipper Dawid Malan (305) and Kent’s Tawanda Muyeye (362) have bettered the left-handed opener’s return.
Jennings, 33-years-old, is on course to better his best ever Blast season, which came last year with 415 runs in 15 appearances.