2 T20 defeats in 2 days for Young Foxes

 Leicestershire's T20 campaign got off to an awful start with two defeats in two days.  On Friday, Leicestershire batted first and made 183 runs.  But they never looked like defending the score as Nottinghamshire reached their target with 7 wickets in hand and 14 balls to spare.

Yesterday, captain Josh Cobb won the toss and elected to field first on a gloriously sunny afternoon at Grace Road.  This decision may be due to Friday's result when the bowlers could could defend a very good T20 score.

It made no difference to the result.  This time, Leicestershire's batting imploded chasing 174 to win giving Derbyshire a 24 run victory.  Leicestershire were 149 all out after 18.2 overs.

This is a very young Leicestershire side who are still learning.  They don't have the experience of Paul Nixon, Claude Henderson, Abdul Razzaq, Will Jefferson and Andrew McDonald, to name but a few, from the winning 2011 T20 campaign.  We must not forget that.

A very good example of youth coming of age, has been 22 year old Cobb's impressive season as captain.  His own form has gone from strength-to-strength since taking charge.  Cobb's three YB40 centuries in successive matches being the pinnacle.

Yet whenever Cobb does fail with bat, the team seem to lose their way and panic.  Yesterday was a prime example of that.  Cobb made a brilliant 47 off 26 balls to setup a good platform.  When he was dismissed, the score was 54 for 1 in the 6th over and a victory still on the cards. 

However, the Foxes lost 4 middle order wickets for 4 runs in the space of 11 balls, losing the way completely in this run chase.  Following the captain's dismissal, Leicestershire lost 9 wickets for 95 runs in 13 overs.

Cobb was very frank in his post match interview.  He expressed his disappointment with the result and rued the soft nature of the batsmen's dismissals.

The bowling attack also appeared to need a wiser head to turn to.  Leicestershire's three winning T20 campaigns have always centred on good bowling by taking the pace off the ball.  So I was surprised that Leicestershire didn't bolster their bowling by including Jigar Naik in the final 11 to support Cobb and Bangladesh's Shakib Al Hasan.

The T20 is Leicestershire's best chance of success this season.   They have been firmly at the bottom of division 2 of the County Champion for most of the season.  The YB40 campaign got off to a great start with the 3 consecutive victories; but his has been followed by 3 defeats.  A financially struggling club like Leicestershire needs a good T20 campaign.

In both matches so far, you would have backed Leicestershire as favourites at the mid-innings interval, so it is a bitter pill to swallow for this young Foxes team.  Leicestershire have now lost their last 5 games in all competitions.  The Foxes don't play until Friday now.  It will be a good opportunity for them to re-group and attempt to find that winning habit again.

Finally, during yesterday's match a little boy called Archie was struck in the back of the head by a ball Derbyshire's Chesney Hughes hit for 6.  I'm pleased to say Archie is fine and he high-fived a very apologetic Hughes at the end of the game.  Archie also received some signed memorabilia from Hughes.  That'll be a story to tell everyone when he grows up.