Foxes unchanged for Rapids clash

Leicestershire CCC Head Coach Pierre de Bruyn was delighted with his team’s opening night Royal London One-Day Cup performance against Lancashire Lightning – but now wants a repeat at the Fischer County Ground against Worcestershire Rapids tomorrow (11am start).

The game at Emirates Old Trafford was full of good individual displays with half-centuries from Mark Pettini, Cameron Delport (pictured) and Mark Cosgrove, four wickets for James Sykes, and fine batting under pressure by Tom Wells, Rob Sayer and Zak Chappell.

But the key to victory was a strong team ethic, with players batting and bowling in partnerships and fielding well as a unit until a couple of frenetic overs at the death, coupled with belief.

de Bruyn was pleased with how his team went facing England test players Haseeb Hameed and James Anderson, South Africa internationals Dane Vilas and Ryan McLaren and England Lions all-rounder Liam Livingstone, but knows the Foxes will need to produce another strong performance tomorrow.

"Coming to Old Trafford against a good side, I thought we held our nerve in pressure situations. One thing we wanted to do was to play 100 overs of cricket,” said de Bruyn.

"Our spinners bowled together, and it worked for us. The wicket was very dry. We had a very young bowling attack, and they really stood up. Perhaps the last two overs in their innings when we dropped three catches cost us 20 runs, but I'm very proud of this young bowling attack.

"This is what we're about. The brand of cricket we want to play is that it doesn't matter what the situation is, we want to compete in every battle. We did that. We never backed away.

"We talk about one batter has to get a hundred. It didn't happen, but four batters got themselves in and we had contributions throughout the order."

“With only eight games in the competition we needed to start well and we certainly did that. We knew it would be hard but it was the perfect start for us.

“Now there’s the challenge of two very important home games against Worcestershire and Warwickshire in the next three days and we will need to play well again.”

The Foxes are still without injured captain Clint McKay for the visit of the Rapids. The Victorian remains on the sidelines along with Ben Raine, Richard Jones, Colin Ackermann and James Burke, so Ned Eckersley will again lead the side.

Leicestershire have named an unchanged squad, a match where under 16s can come to watch for free.

The visitors also started their campaign with an impressive win against Notts Outlaws, a game in which Joe Leach (3-50), Ross Whiteley (41*) and Joe Clarke (40) all performed well.

Leach is now skipper of the Rapids, who will again be boosted by the availability of England all-rounder Moeen Ali. Their overseas player is John Hastings, another all-rounder who adds plenty of balance to the side along with Leach and Ali.

Foxes (from): Eckersley (capt), Ali, Chappell, Cosgrove, Delport, Dexter, Griffiths, Hill (wk), Klein, Parkinson, Pettini, Sayer, Sykes, Wells.