Brydon Carse, Liam Trevaskis and Alex Lees all return to the Durham squad for tonight’s Vitality Blast T20 fixture against Lancashire.
Durham who are still in with a chance of qualifying for the Quarter Final stages take on Lancashire at 6:30pm with Lead High Performance Coach James Franklin naming a squad of 14.
Brydon Carse returns from England duty where he has spent the past 10 days with the ODI squad for their series against Pakistan. Carse taking his maiden international five wicket haul on Wednesday at Edgbaston.
Liam Trevaskis is now out of isolation and is available for selection, while Alex Lees has recovered from a broken hand he suffered against Worcestershire in the County Championship. Lees has been back in the nets with the Durham coaching staff over the past week and is now fit and available for Durham.
Durham slipped out of the top four spot last Friday night when they lost against Derbyshire Falcons and have a further two games to finish in the top four and qualify for the quarter-final stages. Lancashire sit in 4th place in the North group, one point ahead of Durham.
With the Hundred day of Ben Stokes and Mark Wood are not expected to feature for Durham again in this year’s group stages of the T20. Lancashire are also without Liam Livingstone, Matt Parkinson and Saqib Mahmood because they are in the England T20 squad to play Pakistan.
Squad vs Lancashire Lightning (16 July)
Graham Clark, Brydon Carse, Alex Lees, Ned Eckersley, David Bedingham, Sean Dickson, Liam Trevaskis, Paul van Meekeren, Luke Doneathy, Harry Crawshaw, Matthew Potts, Ben Raine, Cameron Bancroft*, Scott Borthwick
Words from James Franklin
We still have two huge T20 games coming up this weekend and if we win both of them we stand a good chance of qualifying, so there is still a huge amount to play for and we are excited with what lies ahead. Brydon Carse is coming back and it has been fantastic to see him take his opportunity with the England team, getting a five-for at Edgbaston which was great for him. All the players, administrators, support staff at Durham are just so chuffed for him to go on and make an impact in pretty much every game he has played in over the past three games. It is a nice taster for him and I don’t think it is going to be the end of Brydon in an England shirt, just the beginning.
So Carse comes back in for Friday and Liam Trevaskis is out of isolation. If you look over the past few weeks we have had some injured and players isolating too, but that has given some opportunities for young guys, who may have not thought they’d ever get an opportunity to play some first team cricket this summer.
The Opposition
Coach: Glen Chapple
Captain: Dane Vilas
Last year’s performance: Semi-finalists
2020 Leading Runscorer: Alex Davies (299 @ 29.9)
2020 Leading Wicket Taker: Matthew Parkinson (15 @ 20.66)
Overseas players: Dane Vilas (South Africa – whole tournament), Finn Allen (New Zealand – whole group stage)
Key man: Matthew Parkinson – England leg-spinner with 75 wickets in the last four Blast campaigns combined. Lightning’s leading wicket taker in each of those. Loves bowling at difficult times, including at the death.
Flies under the radar: Alex Davies – England players Livingstone, Mahmood and Parkinson get the headlines, but the diminutive wicketkeeper batsman (opener) is a star performer. Lightning’s leading runscorer for last three years, including 534 in 2018.
Best player under 24: Finn Allen – Explosive batsman, 22, who made T20 debut for New Zealand in March. Tall opener similar to Tom Banton. Could break up longstanding opening partnership between Alex Davies and Liam Livingstone.
Blast expectations: Lancashire are desperate to add to the solitary title they won in 2015 under the guidance of current England director of cricket Ashley Giles. Beaten semi-finalists in 2018 and 2020, they were beaten in the quarters by 2019 champions Essex at Emirates Riverside. They have all the tools at their disposal. Power and nous with the bat, plenty of pace and spin with the ball. Especially strong on home turf at Emirates Old Trafford, where they push the boundaries out to suit their spinners. With the bat, they have more than enough power to clear those boundaries. It would be a big surprise if they didn’t reach the quarter-finals. Then it is just about being better in those pressure moments which come in knockout games. Only current champions Nottinghamshire have won more matches (119) than Lancashire (118) since the start of the Vitality Blast in 2003.
Match Centre
The fixture against Lancashire Lightning will be available via the clubs match centre and Lancashire YouTube channel . There will also be regular updates on Twitter, with a match report and post-match reaction on the website following the match.