Cosgrove signs new contract

Leicestershire County Cricket Club is delighted to announce that Club Captain Mark Cosgrove has signed a two-year contract extension to keep him at the Fischer County Ground until at least the end of the 2018 season.

The 32-year-old, who was Leicestershire’s top run-scorer in first-class cricket in 2015 with 1,185 runs at an average of 42.34 with four hundreds, is also leading that chart this summer.

Cosgrove has recorded 681 runs at 52.38 having registered three centuries in the Specsavers County Championship, including a brilliant 146 at Worcestershire last week.

Those runs took Cosgrove beyond the 12,000 mark in first-class cricket. The left-hander has passed 50 on 100 occasions in his career and converted 31 of those into three-figure scores, the highest being 233 for Glamorgan against Derbyshire.

A half-century against Derbyshire Falcons in Friday night’s NatWest T20 Blast win at the Fischer County Ground helped Cosgrove to reach another milestone, 2,000 career runs in the shortest form of the game.

Cosgrove, who played for Australia in three one-day internationals, has also scored 3,946 List A runs at an average of 31.31.

Leicestershire CCC Elite Performance Director Andrew McDonald said: “It is fantastic that we’ve been able to secure Mark for a further two years. He is a key batsman in our line-up and is an important part of our leadership group.

“It’s important to have seniority in our batting group with players of Mark’s calibre, and the arrivals of Paul Horton, Neil Dexter and Mark Pettini have also helped in that respect. We look forward to Mark returning to play his cricket here for the next two years.”