Lancashire Lose In Final Tour Match.

Lancashire Lose In Final Tour Match.

Having already lost to Sussex in the twenty20 match last week, Lancashire suffered further frustration today when they lost in a 40 overs match by 23 runs. After Sussex managed a score of just 199-9, Lancashire were poised to obtain revenge, especially after the strong start they made in reply. But, they stumbled from 103-1, to 176 all out.

After 16 overs, the victors had reached 82-3, but they failed to capitalise on this start and only set Lancashire a total of 200 for victory. The early wickets came for Wayne White, who took five wickets in the two-day match versus Sussex, and Kyle Hogg (2).

By the 30th over, Sussex had floundered to a score of 132-8 and it seemed likely that they would fail to bat out their full allocation of overs. Lancashire’s inability to close the innings was, in hindsight, the cause of the loss, as Sussex were able to add 67 runs with the tail-end. Three wickets for Stephen Parry and Steven Croft were encouraging, but the efforts of Ben Brown with the bat frustrated Lancashire, as he was able to hit a late 50, in a stand worth 56 runs for the last wicket.

At the time this seemed to be an acceptable, yet frustrating target for Lancashire and thanks to the efforts of Stephen Moore (50) and Croft (69), the Lightning made an impressive start to the pursuit of 200.

But rather disappointingly, they were unable to see through the chase that had started so well, as they lost 5 wickets for 34 runs, thanks to the work of left-arm chinaman bowler, Michael Rippon who ended up with figures of 6-27. There was no respite for Lancashire who continued to lose their hold over their impressive start and, eventually, the game was concluded, with a 23 run victory for Sussex.