Northamptonshire head coach Darren Lehmann has called on his players to “live in the moment” ahead of their T20 Blast quarter-final.<\/p>\n
The Steelbacks topped the Central & West Group but lost three of their final four games.<\/p>\n
Northants will be aiming to reach a second successive T20 finals day when they host Gloucestershire, who finished third in their group and eight points behind.<\/p>\n
“We have to bring our A-game and the result will look after itself,” said Lehmann.<\/p>\n
Despite their disappointing end to the group phase, Northants picked up more wins (nine) and more points (36) than any other side in the competition.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s quarter-final, which has been brought forward to 17:00 BST to avoid clashing with England’s Fifa World Cup semi-final against Argentina.<\/p>\n
Lehmann said: “To win nine [games] and get a home quarter-final is a pretty good achievement. <\/p>\n
“You obviously want to win 10, 11 or all 12 if you can but we’ve played some really good cricket and now it’s down to the knockout stage.<\/p>\n
“It’s great to be home [for the quarter-final]. It’s great for our fans and for the county itself.”<\/p>\n
The Steelbacks have won the T20 Blast title twice previously, in 2013 and 2016.<\/p>\n
Lehmann, who was Australia head coach from 2013 to 2018, winning two Ashes series and the 2015 World Cup, added that he wanted his players to “enjoy” the occasion of Wednesday’s fixture.<\/p>\n
“It’s really hard to do because there are nerves,” he said. “Everyone has nerves when you play in big games. <\/p>\n
“For us it’s about just doing what we can. Enjoy the moment, enjoy the crowd. It will be a cracking atmosphere.”<\/p>\n
Listen to live coverage of Northamptonshire Steelbacks v Gloucestershire on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio Northampton from 16:30 BST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northamptonshire head coach Darren Lehmann has called on his players to “live in the moment” ahead of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-692608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692608","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=692608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}