Livingstone lights up the Lightning as run goes on
LANCS’ UNBEATEN START IN BLAST CONTINUES
LIaM Livingstone’s blistering 75 set Lancashire up for a pulsating Vitality Blast victory over Derbyshire at Emirates Old Trafford as they posted 219-6 and defended it to win by 17 runs.
The England all-rounder clattered five sixes in 40 balls after Lightning skipper Dane Vilas, with whom he shared 91 for the third wicket, elected to bat before Derbyshire responded with 202-5.
Vilas added 34 off 22 as part of an entertaining support cast including Keaton Jennings (34) and Steven Croft (28).
Derbyshire’s task was always going to be mountainous in reply, despite two wins in three previous North Group games, and so it proved - even with opener Luis Reece’s 55 off 36 and Leus du Plooy’s unbeaten 59 off 31.
Livingstone contributed further to unbeaten Lancashire’s third win in four games with 1-28 from four overs of varied spin.
Lancashire raced away thanks to five fours and a big pulled six in 21 balls for opener Jennings, who recorded his 1,000th T20 run for Lancashire. He is their third quickest player to reach that milestone - in 33 innings, one slower than Jos Buttler and Mal Loye.
Croft later became the first player to score 4,000 T20 runs for Lancashire.
after Jennings sliced Sam Conners to third man, where fellow seamer George Scrimshaw took a fine running catch, and Phil Salt miscued Scrimshaw to mid-on - Livingstone and Vilas put Derbyshire under pressure.
Each of the next five completed overs, the ninth to the 13th, went for double-figures as the score moved to 147-2.
Lightning’s highest Blast total of 231-5 against Yorkshire in 2015 was in jeopardy.
But Derbyshire, led by leg-spinner Mattie McKiernan and Scrimshaw, dragged things back impressively.
McKiernan was one of four former Lancashire players in the visiting team alongside Reece, Mark Watt and wicket-keeper Brooke Guest, and he and Guest combined to get Vilas stumped as the score fell to 166-3 in the 16th.
McKiernan had conceded 22 in his first two overs and ended with 1-34 from four overs, while Scrimshaw (3-45) struck twice in the last to bowl Croft and have Tim David caught at deep midwicket.
Shan Masood was run out trying to pinch one to cover to Croft and then Livingstone had Harry Came stumped in the eighth, leaving Derbyshire 68-2.
However, Reece was not deterred. He ramped seamer Richard Gleeson for his first of two sixes on the way to 50 off 31 balls and later hoisted Matt Parkinson’s leg-spin over long-on.
But when he slapped Tom Hartley’s left-arm spin to long-off it felt like a decisive moment.
and so it proved. Wayne Madsen holed out to Hartley shortly afterwards, and by the time the 15-over mark arrived the Falcons were 134-4 and still 86 from victory.
South african left-hander Du Plooy united with Guest (35) to share 78, and while both played innings as destructive as Livingstone’s, they had been left with too much to do.
They took the target to 36 off two overs with five sixes between them, though Gleeson bowled an excellent penultimate and conceded only six to leave Luke Wood defending 30 off the last.