By Eck, Durham need to bat well!
DURHAM need to show ‘selfbelief and confidence’ with the bat if they are to register a first victory in the Bob Willis Trophy, says captain Ned Eckersley.
The Riversiders head to Grace Road to face Leicestershire today having suffered heavy defeats to Yorkshire and Lancashire in their opening two Trophy fixtures.
Abject batting was the cause of their downfall in both matches, Durham bowled out for a paltry 110 in their second innings against Lancashire to lose by an innings and 18 runs.
However, Eckersley believes a heart-to-heart with his players will lead to an improved batting performance against the Foxes.
He said: “Alex Lees has been leading from the front and has been doing an excellent job at the top of the order and Dave Bedingham has come in and helped him out well.
“The rest of us need to help those guys out and put in some performances with the bat.
“We know we can do it as we did it last season - we just have to turn it around quickly and it has to come in this game.
“We know we can do it, we just need to have that self-belief and confidence to go out and do it and put a performance together.
“We have a real desire to want to do well, not just for ourselves but for the team too.
“We have spoken about it as a team and what we must do.
“The guys have to back themselves to do well - we are doing it in training but it is just about backing ourselves during games.”
Eckersley added: “We know what Leicestershire can do, they won their opening game against a strong Lancashire side.
“We had a good result here against them last season from what looked like a dire position we found ourselves in. Hopefully we can leave with the same result come the end of the week.”
Despite those two dismal defeats, lead high performance coach James Franklin has named an unchanged squad.
DURHAM SQUAD: Alex Lees, Sean Dickson, Cameron Steel, David Bedingham, Gareth Harte, Stuart Poynter, Jack Burnham, Ned Eckersley (c,wk), Brydon Carse, Paul Coughlin, Ben Raine, Matthew Potts, Matthew Salisbury, Chris Rushworth.