{"id":134944,"date":"2025-09-13T16:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T16:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/134944\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T16:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T16:35:10","slug":"t20-blast-finals-day-lancashire-hampshire-somerset-and-northants-bid-for-title-at-edgbaston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/134944\/","title":{"rendered":"T20 Blast Finals Day: Lancashire, Hampshire, Somerset and Northants bid for title at Edgbaston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lancashire are back at Finals Day for the first time in three years and a 10th time overall, but their success rate on the big stage is low.<\/p>\n

Despite often arriving packed full of stellar names, they have only been successful once back in 2015.<\/p>\n

Ironically, that was probably when they had a team least likely to win it, with Gavin Griffiths handed his T20 debut in the semi-final and playing key roles in both that game and the final.<\/p>\n

Fast forward 10 years and the captain from 2015, Steven Croft, is now interim head coach.<\/p>\n

He has tried to pick up the pieces in County Championship Division Two during a tumultuous campaign. In the T20 Blast, Lancashire have been far happier.<\/p>\n

They won the North Group, and then thanks to a splendid 85 not out from Liam Livingstone, they saw off Kent in the quarter-final to book their spot at Edgbaston.<\/p>\n

But in a manner similar to 2015, it is more a case of who is unable to play for the Red Rose than who can.<\/p>\n

England’s T20 series with South Africa deprives them of Phil Salt, Jos Buttler, Luke Wood and Saqib Mahmood, while of their overseas players, Ashton Turner has been recalled by Cricket Australia and Chris Green is at the Caribbean Premier League.<\/p>\n

The situation is far from ideal, as T20 skipper Keaton Jennings acknowledged,<\/a> but they have to find a way to succeed.<\/p>\n

“We’re still confident we can win two games on the day,” Croft told BBC Radio Lancashire.<\/p>\n

“We usually get some good players plucked away from us, so we’re used to it. It’s frustrating, but it is what it is.<\/p>\n

“There might be some debuts on the day, but we’re still going to back those lads that go on the field and they still could be match-winners.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lancashire are back at Finals Day for the first time in three years and a 10th time overall,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-134944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}