Jos Buttler will not feature for Lancashire Lightning in their NatWest T20 Blast match against Derbyshire Falcons owing to a thumb injury suffered in the recent win at Worcester last Friday.
After receiving confirmation that Buttler had sustained a small stable fracture to his left thumb, Lancashire have decided that the England wicketkeeper will be omitted from the squad on this occasion, with this injury raising doubts over whether or not Buttler will make an appearance at Southport in the Championship match against Durham starting on Saturday.
This injury also means that loan signing Tom Moores will return behind the stumps after missing out in the win at Worcester. Buttler, who was injured off the bowling of Luis Reece, then went on to hit Lancashire's fastest T20 fifty in just 20 balls, hitting seven fours and four sixes in his 57 from 22 balls. His destructive innings allowed Lancashire to register a powerplay score of 98/1 - another club record - sharing a 96-run stand with Alviro Petersen in the first 5.4 overs.
Lancashire started the defence of their Twenty20 crown with a humbling nine-wicket defeat at home to Derbyshire back in May, one of five defeats suffered by Ashley Giles' side in ten North Group games. The Falcons chased Lancashire's sub-par target of 132 with 38 balls to spare at Emirates Old Trafford, with Kiwi Hamish Rutherford hitting six fours and three sixes in his unbeaten innings of 71 off 40 balls.
However, since their resounding success in the opening match of the campaign, Derbyshire have recorded only one victory in ten attempts, a run of form that has left the Midlands outfit facing an uphill struggle to reach the knockout stages of the tournament.
Visitors Lancashire will know that they too have suffered from an indifferent run of form in this year's competition after lifting the trophy at Edgbaston last summer, but the champions are still capable of progressing to the quarter-finals if they are able to repeat the performance they gave against Worcestershire in their last T20 outing.
Derbyshire 14-man squad: Wes Durston (c), Hamish Rutherford, Chesney Hughes, Neil Broom, Wayne Madsen, Ben Slater, Shiv Thakor, Jimmy Neesham, Alex Hughes, Matt Critchley, Harvey Hosein (wk), Ben Cotton, Andy Carter, Tom Milnes.
Lancashire 13-man squad: Steven Croft (c), Karl Brown, Nathan Buck, Jordan Clark, George Edwards, Arron Lilley, Liam Livingstone, Saqib Mahmood, Tom Moores (wk), Stephen Parry, Alviro Petersen, Luke Procter, Luis Reece.
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