Pettini excited by Foxes future

The Leicestershire Foxes batsmen have started the Royal London One-Day Cup campaign extremely well, none more so than Mark Pettini.

The opener started with scores of 59 and 36 against Lancashire and Worcestershire respectively before posting his List A career-best, a stunning 159 against Warwickshire as the team beat the defending champions by 103 runs.

Pettini’s knock was also the highest Leicestershire individual score against a first-class county, beating Brian Davison’s 158 against the same opposition in 1972.

In all competitions, Pettini has scored 491 runs at an average approaching 62 with three half-centuries and two hundreds. With the team racking up nearly 1,000 runs in the first three Royal London One-Day Cup matches, and showing improvement in Specsavers County Championship, it has been an encouraging start to the season all round.

“I didn’t realise my innings was a club record against another county in one-day cricket so it’s pleasing to have that,” said Pettini. “To be honest, by the end, I was just trying to keep up running with Wellsy (Tom Wells)!

“We’ve spoken about the fact that 50 overs is a long time in the modern game and there is a need for big scores so it has been good to contribute. It’s been a good start but we need to keep batting well and posting scores of 300+ in one-day cricket.

“It’s definitely been great to score some runs personally but the most important thing is that we have been playing well in the last couple of weeks. Our start in the white ball competition bodes wells; we’ve only lost once and that was narrow with a good batting performance, and we batted well in both innings against Glamorgan in the last Championship game.

“The competitions work well in a block as you don’t have to switch between red ball and white ball as much as before. I am used to switching formats at this stage of my career but it is very difficult for the younger players. This structure allows everyone to have focus and we’ve made a good start.”

Pettini also had the best seat in the house as a couple of young Foxes, Aadil Ali and Tom Wells, showed their class. The batsman feels the future is bright at the club.

He said: “We speak a lot as a batting unit about batting to the situation and Aadil (Ali) and Wellsy (Tom Wells) both gave a demonstration of that on Tuesday.

“I’m so pleased for the younger guys, they have worked so hard. Aadil and Wellsy are really hungry and it’s great to see them contribute to victories. Wellsy was great with both bat and ball and Aadil has played two fantastic knocks in the last two games. Aadil has shown that he is very flexible; able to set a platform or give it a whack towards the end.

“Zak (Chappell) and Gav (Griffiths) have been opening the bowling, Rob (Sayer) and James (Sykes) have been bowling well, and we all saw what Lewis Hill was capable of last year. We have a heap of talented young guys coming through and it’s all really encouraging.”

Another key feature of the Foxes success in this competition has been the opening partnership developed between Pettini and Cameron Delport. The duo have started by scoring runs at a good pace, including stands of 101 against Lancashire and 77 versus Warwickshire.

Pettini enjoys batting alongside his colleague and Leicestershire supporters will be hoping their form continues ahead of important games at Durham Jets (tomorrow) and Notts Outlaws (Sunday).

He said: “Cameron and I complement each other really well, we work well together and are good friends off the field, and the right-left handed combination works well. We hit the ball in different areas and both try not to let the bowlers settle.

“Cameron hits the ball as hard as anyone I’ve played alongside, and I have no doubt there’s a big score just around the corner. He’s one of the few batsmen I’ve seen that can hit the first ball over the ropes. He got 150 in the Seconds since returning and he’s capable of those sort of performances.”

* Thanks to Chris Roe of Neville Chadwick Photography for the photo of Mark Pettini.