Leicestershire (County Championship only)

[GrahamB]

2023-2024 Season

First of all, my save is using the database just prior to the final release, so player abilities will be different.

Beforehand, I took the opportunity to rearrange our budget, and sign Solomon Bell to add to our batting. He'd only played one FC game and didn't do well, but his second team average of 62 suggested that he could be a good buy, and he was the best option that we could afford.

In the first season, with Matt Salisbury captaining the team, we finished bottom of Division 2, making a good start, but falling away towards the end.

The best batting averages for us were:

Ajinkya Rahane - 44.12
Solomon Bell - 44.72
Nick Welch - 44.44

The best bowling averages were:

Wiaan Mulder - 27.48
Matt Salisbury - 30.33
Rehan Ahmed - 32.87

As you can see, we struggled all round, especially when Mulder was away on International duty.

[GrahamB]

2024-2025 Contracts

Firstly, we released all of our overseas players.
Rahane had scored a double century and a century, but was badly inconsistent.
Handscomb should have been a useful batsman/keeper, but was underwhelming with his performances.
Mulder was the only one worth holding onto, but his asking price was high, and I wanted to see the other options we had.

Of our expiring contracts, we renewed only two - Nick Welch, and youth batsman, Danny Tong (second team average 57).

With pace bowler, Chris Wright retiring, and Mulder leaving, we'd need to bolster our attack bigtime, as only Salisbury and Ahmed were the well-performed bowlers remaining.

Our batting also needed strengthening, with a good keeper/batsman high on our list.

In the end, we signing NZ player, Tom Latham (keeper/batsman) as our main overseas player, but when he's away on International duty, we'll need to fall back on either Harry Swindells, Lewis Hill, or Sol Budinger.
Our overseas reserve player is the promising Sri Lankan batsman, Vinushka Silva.
Our other overseas signing was young West Indian batsman, Johann Jeremiah.

On the domestic front, we tried to sign batsman, Sam Hain, but Lancashire offered him a better deal.
So we ended up signing Josh Bohannon, and youth player Stuart Robinson (second team average 62).

To give us further bowling options, we signed inexperienced pace bowlers, Richard Newman and Ben Allison, plus youth players, Harry Petrie (pace) and James Bond (spin).

Our second season promises to be an interesting one!

[GrahamB]

Our opening match is away to Kent.

The following side has been selected:

Tom Latham (wk)
Johann Jeremiah
Solomon Bell
Josh Bohannon (captain)
Nick Welch
Stuart Robinson
Colin Ackermann
Rehan Ahmed
Harry Petrie
Richard Newman
Matt Salisbury

[GrahamB]

KENT v LEICESTERSHIRE

We lost the toss and were put into bat under cloudy skies, with bad weather forecast to be on the way. Of course, if we'd won the toss, we'd have put them in too.

Tom Latham looked to be in imperious form, but when he fell for 38, it sparked a mini-collapse that had us in trouble at 85/4.
Solomon Bell at number 3 had been scratching around, trying to find some form, but he paired up with debutante, Stuart Robertson, in a massive stand that turned around the advantage, and when Robertson was dismissed for 90, we were 263/5.
However, Bell got little real support from the remaining batsmen, and he was still there on 139no when we were all out for 331.
The most impressive and dangerous of the Kent bowlers was young paceman, Jaskaran Singh, who bowled beautifully to finish with figures of 18-4-38-3.

In the Kent first innings, the crazy run out of Travis Head for one saw them at 85/3, and it was left to Daniel Bell-Drummond, with the help of the middle order, to take the score through to 194/4, before the innings fell away.
Kent collapsed to be 237 all out, with veteran Leicestershire paceman, Matt Salisbury finishing with 6/56, showing that he is not yet a spent force.

Frequent rain breaks hampered Leicestershire's second innings, effectively making a declaration that would ensure a good finish, difficult to do, and the pitch was slower as well, which didn't help.
After a good opening stand of 130 between Latham and Johann Jeremiah, wickets fell cheaply, and we eventually declared at 226/5, leaving Kent the unlikely target of 321 to chase in 3 hours.

Although our new look bowling attack was tight, it did cause concern that we were unable to break the second innings opening partnership between Ben Compton and Zac Crawley, as they batted through to 161/0 from 53 overs.

[GrahamB]

During the week, Johann Jeremiah was called up for the West Indies test squad, so the impressive second team form of Sam Evans, sees him coming into the playing eleven for our next match, against Gloucestershire.

Promising young Sri Lankan batsman, Vinushka Silva, our reserve overseas player, will play, meaning that Colin Ackermann drops out of the side.

Pace bowler, Ben Allison is rewarded for impressive second team form, and will replace Harry Petrie in our bowling attack.

Leicestershire v Gloucestershire

Tom Latham (wk)
Sam Evans
Solomon Bell
Josh Bohannon (captain)
Vinushka Silva
Stuart Robertson
Nick Welch
Rehan Ahmed
Ben Allison
Richard Newman
Matt Salisbury

[GrahamB]

LEICESTERSHIRE v GLOUCESTERSHIRE

Gloucestershire won the toss and chose to bat first.

Chris Dent, James Bracey and Phil Richards all took advantage of good batting conditions to score centuries, and with the score at 554/5, we were well and truly facing an uphill battle.
Fortunately, a double breakthrough from Ben Allison, started a collapse, and with Josh Bohannon chipping in with a couple of wickets, Gloucestershire were all out for 600.

In reply, we were in deep trouble at 114/4, before two big partnerships saved our bacon.
Solomon Bell and Vinushka Silva put on 165 for the fifth wicket, and then Stuart Robertson combined with Silva to put on 159 for the sixth wicket.
At 459/7, we were still a long way behind, but Silva found a solid ally in Allison, and a third century partnership rescued us.
Silva was the last man out, for a magnificent 227, and the innings ended at 594 all out.

Sadly, there was not enough time left in the match to procure anything other than a draw, but our bowlers regathered some lost confidence, by running through the Gloucestershire innings to see them finish on 193/8.
Jack Taylor was their only batsman to go past 50, while Ben Allison, Matt Salisbury, Richard Newnan and Rehan Ahmed all picked up a couple of wickets.

A tremendous fightback from us, when things could have gone so badly wrong.

[GrahamB]

As this story was started with a pre-release database, I'm going to start another story with the latest database.