Lewis relishing new season – with no points deductions!
Durham coach Jon Lewis is relishing starting the 2018 season with a clean slate after the club’s previous campaign was stymied by sanctions across all three formats.
The 2017 campaign in Division Two of the Specsavers County Championship began with a 48-point deduction, in addition to further points punishments in the Royal London One-Day Cup and T20 Blast - which proved to be especially costly in the 50-over competition as Durham narrowly missed out on the knockout stage.
Lewis is looking ahead at the new campaign with his team enjoying equal footing with the rest of the field in all three tournaments. However, he still looks back at the last term with frustration.
He said: “We’re going into the season with a clean slate. It wasn’t the case last year. It was a sense of the unknown, no one really knew how to approach the season because of the deductions we had and the impact it would have on the team.
“Obviously it’s not a good thing to start on minus 48 points, but the scheduling was not great either because we only had two Championship games before the 50-over matches started. By the time we played our first Championship match, we were already 70 points off the pace.
“We didn’t get a win in those first two matches, which meant we went into July on minus points. So it was a long way into the season to see yourself on minus points. It kind of dented our ambition at that point.
“It wasn’t an easy situation, but we knew it would be tough, although maybe we didn’t realise how hard it would be. Not getting through the 50-over competition because of the two-point deduction was a bitter pill to swallow because we played some decent cricket.”
Durham have encountered a familiar adversary in pre-season so far, with the stubbornly wintry weather disrupting their practice plans. But the forecast is for spring to arrive in time for the three-day match against Durham MCCU which is due to start at the Emirates Riverside on Friday next week – with Durham missing the opening round of Championship matches.