Hameed makes Lancashire debut on rain affected day

Lancashire handed a debut to 18-year-old Haseeb Hameed in wake of the announcement that veteran opening batsmen Paul Horton would not be offered a new contract for the 2016 season.

The Lancashire faithful didn’t have to wait long to get the first glimpse of their newest academy product. Captain Steven Croft won the toss in very overcast conditions and decided that his Lancashire team would bat first.

Hameed (28) opened the batting with Karl Brown (80*) in less than friendly conditions. The pair made slow but steady progress through the morning session. They were not given a fair chance to play themselves in fully due to continuous rain breaks.

Each delay lasted a relatively short time but would have been enough to disturb the rhythm. On one occasion the players hadn’t made their way off the pitch before they were being recalled to the middle.

Only 22 overs were bowled in the morning session and Lancashire found themselves 47/0 at the interval. Youngster Hameed had batted patiently for his 14 runs with Brown on 25.

Hameed was eventually the first man to go, he was trapped LBW to Graham Wagg (2-40) for 28 in the 37^th over. This brought Alviro Petersen (29) to the crease. Some of the Glamorgan bowlers will still be having nightmares about the last time they came up against Petersen in red ball cricket.

Fortunately for the travelling Glamorgan support they were able claim the wicket of Petersen relatively early in his innings. The South African batsmen who had already struck 6 boundaries in his 48-ball stay, attempted a drive in the penultimate over before the tea. He was only able to find Chris Cooke at short Cover, giving David Lloyd (1-32) his first wicket.

This wicket brought the other half of the Colwyn Bay double act to the wicket. Ashwell Prince joined Brown at the crease and the pair successfully negotiated the final few deliveries of the session. Lancashire went to tea with the scoreboard showing 126/2. Brown was still unbeaten on 60 with Prince 0*.

Brown had brought up his fifty in the afternoon session from 124 balls including 8 boundaries. His seventh of the first class season in only his twelfth innings.

Prince was finding runs hard to come by following the interval, having found the fielder on more than one occasion when he attempted his trade mark pick up through the leg side shot. This time the ball was only to find Will Bragg at mid-wicket from the bowling of Wagg. Prince’s stay had lasted 17-balls and had yielded only one scoring shot.

The wicket of Prince gave Glamorgan their first bowling point of the season against Lancashire. Having only picked up the wickets of Paul Horton and Karl Brown in the allotted 110 overs at Colwyn Bay.

Steven Croft (9*) joined Brown at the wicket in conditions that got gloomier by the minute. The floodlights had been on for most of the afternoon but were really starting to take effect when rain forced the players from the field.

No further play was possible due to mixture of bad light and steady drizzle.

Lancashire will resume their innings on day 2 with the score on 161/3 with Brown 80 and Croft 9 the not out batsmen, hoping that they can push on and gain some valuable batting points to confirm their promotion back to Division one next year.