Leicestershire’s two-year drought set to continue against Essex

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/sep/15/leicestershire-essex-county-championship-match-report

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On yet another grim day – in which they were eight wickets down at lunch and already 15 runs behind by the close – Leicestershire took further significant steps towards eclipsing their neighbours Northamptonshire from the record books.

Sunday marked the second anniversary of the county’s last County Championship victory, in the final match of the 2012 summer against Gloucestershire, meaning that if they are unable to win here – which already looks a pretty safe bet – or at Derby next week, Leicestershire will become the first team to go through two full seasons without a win since Northamptonshire before the second world war.

They still have some way to go to match the impressive ineptitude of that Northamptonshire side, who went 99 games without a win between the Mays of 1935 and 1939 – when they ended their sequence one short of a century with an innings victory against, you guessed it, Leicestershire.

This feeble Leicester run is a comparatively modest 30 matches and counting, but it has still become deeply demoralising for everyone involved with a county who were champions twice in the 90s, and won the last of their three Twenty20 Cups only three seasons ago.

Leicestershire are continuing to produce a decent supply of players but are finding them increasingly difficult to keep. In addition to the trio of internationals poached by Nottinghamshire in recent years – Stuart Broad, James Taylor and Harry Gurney – they will lose Nathan Buck to Lancashire and Shiv Thakor to Derbyshire at the end of this season. Ned Eckersley, Greg Smith and the captain Josh Cobb are thought to remain vulnerable to further raids. Even their efforts to sign the Australian bowler Clint McKay are thought to have been frustrated by the big-spending rivals at Trent Bridge.

The situation has prompted Neil Davidson, a former chairman whose eventful tenure ended in bitter acrimony with his last appointment as captain Matthew Hoggard, to stand for re-election to the board. Leicestershire are also hunting for a new chief executive, with Mike Siddall to stand down at the end of the season, and there could be a chink of light in the suggestions that Wasim Khan, the former Warwickshire and Sussex batsman who has won widespread admiration and the MBE for his work with the Cricket Foundation’s Chance to Shine initiative, is interested in the role.

Leicestershire actually started this summer more brightly than last but suffered an early blow when Ramnaresh Sarwan returned for a second season as their overseas player with a back problem. In contrast Essex have received good value from Jesse Ryder as he continues to battle back from injury and personal problems away from the international spotlight. Not for the first time the New Zealander justified his elevation to share the new ball, bowling throughout the morning session from the Bennett end to earn season’s best figures of five for 50 by wobbling the ball both ways at a lively medium pace.

Ryder owed at least a couple of his wickets to David Masters, who bowled manfully at the other end. The 36-year-old is still a thoroughly unpleasant handful on mornings such as this, with grey clouds and a green pitch at a ground he knows better than most. It was undeniably a good toss for James Foster to win, but Dan Redfern put a poor Leicestershire batting performance into context with a sensible unbeaten half century until he ran out of partners shortly after lunch.

Essex still have an outside chance of pinching the second promotion place behind Worcestershire, and their hopes of closing the 22-point deficit on Hampshire were boosted as Kent made 312 for three on the first day at the Ageas Bowl, with Daniel Bell-Drummond and Sam Northeast reaching unbeaten centuries.

Somerset, for whom Craig Kieswetter made 69 from 80 balls in the Division One game against Middlesex in his first innings since suffering serious facial injuries two months ago, hope to announce their new coach by the end of the week, with the former England coach Ashley Giles among those who have been interviewed in Taunton.