Derbyshire v Lancashire T20 preview
There's a home debut for Tillakaratne Dilshan and the only home T20 appearance for Hashim Amla tomorrow as Derbyshire entertain Lancashire.
It is in front of the TV cameras and against a side against who we rarely do well, so logically we should be soundly beaten in this one, especially since our record in T20 of late is little short of abysmal. By late, I mean since the competition began.
I would settle for winning at least one more game than we did last year, which means we need two wins. It's a funny old game though, as Jimmy Greaves used to say. How else can you explain Leicestershire beating a good Durham side yesterday, and with considerable ease? I may need to revise my impression of them, though, as their T20 line-up looks considerably stronger than that of their four-day side.
As for us, Graeme Welch has named the following squad for tomorrow night:
Dilshan, Durston, C Hughes, Amla, Godleman, Thakor, Elstone, Poynton, W White, Wainwright, Palladino, Cotton, Knight.
I couldn't call the two to miss out, although Dilshan's good off-spin means we have an extra bowler in the side, whichever eleven takes the field.
Lancashire introduce James Faulkner to English county audiences in a squad that lines up as follows:
Ashwell Prince, Tom Smith, Karl Brown, Steven Croft, Liam Livingstone, Paul Horton, James Faulkner, Alex Davies, Jordan Clark, Tom Bailey, George Edwards, Arron Lilley, Stephen Parry, Rob Jones.
There is no Alviro Petersen, but there’s no shortage of hard-hitting batsmen and accurate bowling. We should give them a game, but I suspect that on the night they will prove too strong. It just needs one special performance though. Our top four, on form, is excellent and theoretically we bat deep, as long as we can avoid manic middle overs. There are plenty of bowlers too and as The Eagles once said - one of these nights...
I'll be watching developments, like the rest of you and will blog after the game.