{"id":744542,"date":"2026-08-20T23:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T23:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/744542\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T23:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T23:42:11","slug":"county-championship-derbyshire-v-durham-alex-lees-hits-53-on-rain-hit-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/744542\/","title":{"rendered":"County Championship: Derbyshire v Durham &#8211; Alex Lees hits 53 on rain-hit day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rothesay County Championship, Division Two, The OurCoop County Ground, Derby (day one)<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Durham 102: Lees 53*<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Derbyshire: Yet to bat<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/cricket\/scorecard\/e-233540\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Match scorecard<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Durham captain Alex Lees showed his quality on a rain-hit first day against Derbyshire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lees batted with patience and concentration in tough conditions at Derby as his unbeaten 53 steered the Division Two leaders to 102-2 when bad light ended play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ben McKinney pulled Ben Aitchison over wide long on for six but went for an expansive drive two balls later and was caught behind.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lees then shared a second wicket stand of 61 with Will Rhodes, who was removed for 23 by New Zealand seamer Brett Randell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Only 16 balls were bowled in the first two sessions after thunderstorms had earlier halted play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England off-spinner Shoaib Bashir was brought into the attack for a brief two-over spell which cost only three runs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Report by ECB Reporters&#8217; Network, supported by Rothesay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rothesay County Championship, Division Two, The OurCoop County Ground, Derby (day one) Durham 102: Lees 53* Derbyshire: Yet&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-744542","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\/744542","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=744542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}