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| Promotion to the first Division and a maiden Twenty20 trophy made 2015 a season to remember for Lancashire. |
If you had told Lancashire director of cricket, Ashley Giles that in
2016 Lancashire would be competing in Division One of the County Championship,
as well as defending the Twenty20, title he would have been a very happy man
indeed. Lancashire’s primary objective, promotion in the four-day contest, was
sealed with two games left in their fixture list, although in reality they and
Surrey had secured first-division status much sooner.
Surrey and the Red Rose County utterly dominated Division Two; Lancashire made a formidable start with
the red ball, while the eventual winners of the second division finished the
season in style. The contributions of stand-in skipper Steven Croft in all
three formats, in itself, was a tremendous effort for the club, but the fact
that he did all of this in the unfortunate absence of club captain Tom Smith
made it all the more admirable.
The County Championship campaign saw Kyle Jarvis take 62 wickets
before a broken hand ended his season prematurely, while Ashwell Prince
finished his career and his fifth season at Old Trafford with the most runs in
red-ball cricket in either division. Lancashire’s start to the season was
especially rampant and so it was difficult to see how they would fail to secure
promotion.
Surrey emerged as the only real threat and the 54-point gap between
Lancashire and Essex in third demonstrates the void between the top two sides
and the rest of the division. The only criticism of Lancashire in the final
month of the season was that they began to stumble and found themselves
fighting an uphill battle to salvage less-than entertaining draws, rather than
be able to keep up with Surrey’s winning form, which allowed the South-London
County to lift the trophy by the margin of ten points.
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| Kyle Jarvis took 62 wickets in 13 matches before suffering a broken hand. |
Lancashire can regard their 50-over campaign as a vast improvement,
although that is not to say that they are, by any means, the finished article
in this format. They narrowly failed to claim a spot in the quarter-finals,
only by the margin of net run rate, but the performances of Alex Davies and
Stephen Parry were particularly reassuring for the Red Rose County. In the
end, Lancashire found their winning formula for the 50-over contest too late
and were left ruing narrow defeats earlier in the contest.
Fate conspired in Lancashire’s favour in the shortest format of the
game, as the Lightning ended their exhausted wait for a maiden T20 trophy. The
first dose of luck came when Lancashire edged through to the knockout stages by
virtue of having a superior net run rate to Nottinghamshire. Lancashire then
edged their way to Finals Day on the technicality of losing fewer wickets
against Kent, who topped the South Group.
The second of these two conspiring
factors was surely the moment when the Lancashire faithful must have known that this
was their year for T20 glory. Lancashire played the best cricket on the day and
overcame the heartache of the previous season, cementing their first Twenty20
title to suit their reputation as the side who has won the most individual
matches in the tournament’s history.
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| Ashwell Prince scored 2,131 runs in all three formats. |
LVCC: 2nd, Division Two
T20 Blast: Winner (4th, North Group)
RLODC: Group Stages (5th)
Leading
run-scorer: Ashwell
Prince - 2,131 runs
Leading
wicket-taker: Kyle Jarvis
- 78 wickets
Win %: 48.78
Player of
the Season:
Ashwell Prince leaves a
sizeable and - some might say - irreplaceable void in Lancashire’s ranks, both
for his contributions with the bat and the impact he has had on the dressing
room and its younger inhabitants. A return of 1,478 runs in the County
Championship made the South-African the highest run-scorer in the format, after
Prince was the first person to reach the coveted milestone of 1,000 runs at the
end of June.
Breakthrough
Player:
It seems unfair to describe Haseeb Hameed as a breakthrough player;
his talent as a batsman has been known for some time at England Under-19 level.
However, on the county scene, the Bolton-born batsman has only truly
demonstrated his talent this season. Hameed is certainly a player for a
difficult situation and after the departure of Paul Horton Lancashire will be
delighted to have unearthed such a determined and mature character. The England
Under-19 joint-captain hit 91 against Surrey and scored 257 runs in six innings
at an average of 42.83.
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| Haseeb Hameed impressed in his short stint at the top of the order. |
Need
to work on:
The start
you make can be vital as to how the rest of the game pans out. Lancashire found
themselves fighting, in rather unattractive fashion, to save the draw after
allowing the opposition to seize the initiative, something which Giles was
particularly critical of in the concluding weeks of the season. It is tough to
criticise a team who only suffered one defeat in four-day cricket, but tougher
oppositions in Division One will not be so easy to overcome as those in the
second tier.
Tweet
of the Season:
An emotional farewell from Ashwell Prince takes the prize for the Tweet of the Season...
Season
Summary:
Promotion to
the first division and one-day silverware has made 2015 a memorable season for
all those concerned with Lancashire and particularly the players who have
fought hard for their success. If they had been able to win the second division
and reach the knockout stages of the 50-over contest, then it would have been a
near-perfect campaign. As it is, Lancashire enter the 2016 season as a
Division-One side, as the defending champions in the T20 Blast and they also
have a pool of talented youngsters who are ready to take their chance in the
first team.
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