Lloyd Tennant and Ben Smith

Leicestershire County Cricket Club has announced that Senior Coaches Lloyd Tennant and Ben Smith have left Grace Road following a coaching restructure.

Tennant’s involvement as player and coach at Leicestershire County Cricket Club spanned 29 years. The seamer had a seven-year spell as a player at Grace Road starting in 1985 also representing England U19s before returning in 1993 as part of the coaching staff. He has been at the club ever since and was part of the coaching team for five T20 Finals Days.

The 47-year-old worked in a number of roles at Leicestershire including Bowling Coach, Senior Coach and Academy Director and was in charge of the Second XI that won an unprecedented domestic treble in 2014.

Tennant worked closely with Stuart Broad in the early part of his career and helped a number of promising young bowlers make good progress, including James Ormond, Luke Wright, Harry Gurney, Nathan Buck and Ben Raine.

Tennant also gained international experience having been part of seven ECB tours in his role as England under 19s bowling coach. Two of those tours were World Cups.

Smith had a 16-year association with Leicestershire County Cricket Club’s First XI both as a player and coach. After leaving to join Worcestershire at the end of the 2001 season, Smith returned as Batting Coach ahead of the 2012 campaign and went on to take a role as Senior Coach.

The batsman came through the system at Leicestershire and registered 8,606 first-class runs for the club, including 20 centuries. Smith recorded 1,000 runs in a season for Leicestershire on three occasions; two of those being the County Championship winning teams of 1996 and 1998. He scored 1,068 runs at 46.43 in 1996 and 1,165 at an average of 64.72 in 1998, and was also a fine one-day player, racking up 5,569 List A runs for the club.

Leicestershire and Rutland Cricket Chief Executive Wasim Khan MBE said: “We would like to thank Lloyd and Ben for all of their loyal and dedicated service to Leicestershire County Cricket Club over the years, both as players and as coaches. Everybody at the club wishes them all of the very best in their future careers.”