Interview: Chris Benbow discusses academy season and player journeys
Lancashire Cricket’s Head of Boys' Talent Pathway, Chris Benbow, says it has been a “brilliant” season for the Club’s junior players.
The pathway and academy have seen plenty of success in 2026, with nine players picked across two ECB-ran cricket festivals, the under-15 Bunbury festival and the under-18 Super 4s festival.
That is testament to the success of the programme that Benbow and his colleagues are running, as they keep the Red Rose’s academy producing excellent cricketers.
However, he said it is not necessarily he and his fellow coaches who deserve all the plaudits, but an achievement for the Club to be proud of across the board.
“It’s less about the coaches. It’s more that, we’re here to facilitate their [the players] practice and check and challenge them in a way that helps them grow. But ultimately, there are bigger sacrifices out there.
“The parents, the schools, their clubs as well. I don’t think it can be underestimated the effort that all those guys put in as well. They’ve got to get to these games, and things have got to be bought, and purchased and planned,” Benbow praised.
“There’s a bigger piece on [the fact] we’re more proud for those guys than we actually are for ourselves. It’s a nice way to top off the work that we’re doing through the pathway, and how we’re trying to get it evolving and emerging year on year.
“I think, for the club, it’s brilliant. Ultimately, there’s a much bigger picture outside of what we do from a coaching perspective.”
With current pathway players excelling, there is the hope they can eventually go on to higher honours in second and first team cricket for Lancashire.
Indeed, there are plenty of current examples of players who have graduated from the academy and are now making a name for themselves in the first team.
One person who springs to mind is Rocky Flintoff. It has been a superb season for the young batter, who hit his maiden Lancashire ton in the Metro Bank One Day Cup, and became a regular in the Rothesay County Championship towards the back end of the campaign.
Benbow referred to Flintoff's time in the professional game so far as one instance of how quickly a player’s career can take off once he’s left the pathway system.
“Rocky is an [excellent] example. He came out that academy process, signed his first professional contract and had some unbelievable success in second team cricket. Then he’s making his England Lions debut and scoring a hundred against Australia A.
“I think it’s that aspirational piece around the fact that, when you come out of the academy, you could be just a year or two away from playing franchise cricket or representing your country at Young Lions or England Lions level.”
On the flip side of that, not ever player experiences such a linear journey. Two current Lancashire players, Ben Walkden and Arav Shetty, were part of the academy, but did not initially get offered a professional contract.
After impressive performances in club cricket and for Lancashire’s Second XI, the pair have worked hard and are now first-team regulars under Steven Croft. It is certainly testament to the graft they have put in.
Discussing their journey, Benbow was full of praise for their resilience to win their professional contracts.
“You look at Arav’s journey; he played some second team cricket as an academy graduate. He went down the university route, represented SACA (South Asian Cricket Academy), kept in touch with us from a second team perspective, got an opportunity in the One Day Cup and took it,” he explained.
“Similarly with Ben, he came out of the academy, went back to club cricket, excelled at club cricket, went abroad to Australia for a couple of years and was banging the door down with his club, Newton-Le-Willows CC. He came back into the second team picture, and then that does create opportunities, and now we’re watching Ben bowling against Durham.”
Expanding on that, Benbow stressed that everyone’s journey is different, and that opportunity is never necessarily gone, as Shetty and Walkden have proven in the last couple of seasons.
“It’s exciting, and it does just show that those doors aren’t close, and the journey into first and second team cricket isn’t a straight line,” Benbow said.
“Those players that do excel at a younger age, that don’t quite get the opportunity to break into the second team or the first team, it does show that through performances there is a route back in, and there is more than one route back in, too.”
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