Weather wins at wet Old Trafford

Weather wins at wet Old Trafford

Thursday night saw a stunning display from the Lancashire lightning, but unfortunately it was lightning of the weather variety rather than the Red Rose outfit as Lancashire’s clash with Northants was abandoned before the scheduled start time.

Manchester was hit by a heavy thunderstorm in the afternoon, leaving the outfield resembling a lake rather than a cricket field, whilst the rain also flooded the Pavilion reception at Old Trafford.

With no let-up in sight and the outfield saturated, umpires Nigel Cowley and Alex Wharf called off proceedings 20 minutes before the scheduled 6:30pm start.

The point gained sees Northants close within one point of Worcestershire at the top of the North group, whilst Lancashire are fifth, kept out of the quarter final spots on net run-rate, however they have played two more games than both Derbyshire and Warwickshire.

Despite their lofty position in the group, Northants’ head coach David Ripley admitted he was happy to take a point from the contest, with his side currently missing a number of key players through injury, as well as having lost Seekkuge Prasanna to the Sri Lankan ODI squad, with the Steelbacks also hosting Durham tomorrow night.

“The weather is frustrating but we do have a few injuries at the moment and if there’s going to be a game rained off, this isn’t a bad one,” he said. “They have Guptil and Buttler available and we’re missing both our overseas players, so we’ll take a point.

“We’re in a good position now with a home game to come against Durham tomorrow night, they are a bit more predictable, they have some really good games and then others where they don’t play so well.

“If we can win tomorrow on top of the point here that will be a great couple of days for us.”

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