Player Profile
Josh Bohannon is one of county cricket’s most prolific batting talents, as he proved during a memorable 2023.
The Boltonian was the leading run-scorer in Division One of the Rothesay County Championship with 1,257 runs at an average of 59.85 with a quartet of centuries. As a result, he was named as the county’s Championship player of the year and Lancashire’s overall player of the year.
Towards the end of the year, he was also selected to be the England Lions captain for their early 2024 red ball tour of India.
Ahead of the 2024 summer, he was appointed as Lancashire’s vice captain under Keaton Jennings.
In early 2022, he was talked about as a serious contender for England’s senior Test tour of the Caribbean. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. But it would be no surprise to see that call come in the near future.
In 2024, he went beyond both 5,000 career first-class runs and 1,000 in List A cricket.
He hit a match-winning 105 against Metro Bank One-Day Cup champions Kent at Blackpool in August 2023 and then hit a fabulous career best 147 off 119 balls in a losing cause against Durham at Sedbergh in July 2024.
Bohannon scored Championship centuries against Surrey in the first week of the 2023 season, adding three figures in further matches against Northamptonshire at home and away and Kent at Canterbury during the final week.
His career haul of 12 first-class centuries includes a brilliant best of 231 coming in the early season 2022 County Championship win over Gloucestershire at Emirates Old Trafford.
He has made the number three spot his own in Championship cricket for the Red Rose.
The 2024 summer didn’t match the previous year’s Championship haul, but he was still solid with 803 runs from 14 matches, including one hundred.
A product of the Farnworth Social Circle club, Bohannon, who turns 28 in early April, first pulled on a Lancashire shirt at Under 13s level in 2010 and went on to represent the Under 14s, 15s and 17s.
In 2014, he helped the Under 17s win the one-day and Championship double alongside Haseeb Hameed - another Social Circle product - and fellow Boltonians Matt and Callum Parkinson.
Bohannon, who has also trained to be an Electrician in his spare time away from the game, debuted in all three formats for the Red Rose in 2018.
He is a batter who shows more poise than power, though it’s not as if he can’t pack a punch. He once scored a second-team T20 century as an opener and has fulfilled that role in the first team on occasions.
Bohannon provided one of the most memorable moments of the 2019 season when notching an emotional maiden first-class century against Derbyshire at Emirates Old Trafford in September.
Watched on by members of his family, Bohannon rewarded the faith of Dane Vilas and Glen Chapple in moving him up to number three by reaching a milestone he just about failed to achieve when stranded on 98 against Leicestershire earlier in the season.
In the Red Rose team that day was Australian overseas star Glenn Maxwell, with whom Josh had forged a close friendship during his short time at Emirates Old Trafford. Maxwell was as nervous as anyone else in the ground as his mate approached three figures.
He totalled 805 first-class runs in 2022, a total bettered the season before with 878 as Lancashire finished second in Division One and qualified for the Bob Willis Trophy final at Lord’s.
While he wasn’t a Blast regular in 2022, he was in the One-Day Cup as the county reached the final at Trent Bridge - only to lose against Kent.
Bohannon, a handy medium pace bowler and a gun fielder, won Lancashire’s breakthrough player of the year award in 2018 and the young player of the year the following summer.
The accolades continued as a result of his stunning 2023, but the only silverware he is really bothered about is a Red Rose trophy or two.
Promotion in the Championship is first port of call in 2025.