Leicestershire closed in on another victory with England all-rounder Rehan Ahmed again playing a starring role on day three of the County Championship match against Derbyshire.<\/b><\/p>\n
Ahmed claimed 4-41 and a total of 10 wickets in the Division Two match at the Central Co-op County Ground to leave the hosts on 98-4 at the close, still 347 runs away from a notional target of 446.<\/p>\n
Luis Reece celebrated career-best match figures of 11-120, taking 5-64, before Leicestershire declared on 236-9 with Ian Holland scoring 90 from 99 balls and Ben Green 45.<\/p>\n
Derbyshire chances were always slim at best on a used pitch and despite 41 from opener Caleb Jewell, they were sliding towards defeat when bad light halted play with seven overs still to bowl.<\/p>\n
Once Leicestershire decided not to enforce the follow-on, it was a question of how quickly they could get to the sort of lead that would put the game beyond Derbyshire.<\/p>\n
Reece had run through them on the second morning and he threatened to do the same again, removing both openers in his first three overs.<\/p>\n
Rishi Patel prodded a simple chance to short cover which gave Wayne Madsen his 100th first-class catch at Derby.<\/p>\n
Madsen held another one to remove Sol Budinger and after some typically flamboyant strokes, Ahmed pulled Reece to deep mid on.<\/p>\n
When Reece trapped Peter Handscomb lbw, there was still a chance Derbyshire could restrict Leicestershire to a target they had a realistic chance of chasing down but Holland dashed those slim hopes.<\/p>\n
Although Alex Thomson removed Lewis Hill, Liam Trevaskis and Louis Kimber before lunch, Holland was four short of 50 at the interval with the lead a daunting 345.<\/p>\n
Holland and Green took that past 400, adding 89 from 85 balls before Green was bowled by Reece who had now taken five wickets in both innings of a match for the first time.<\/p>\n
The declaration came when Holland drove a return catch to Thomson which left Derbyshire a highly improbable target on a challenging pitch.<\/p>\n
They made a decent start until Ahmed made his latest mark on the match, taking three wickets either side of tea.<\/p>\n
David Lloyd pulled a short ball to mid on and Harry Came edged a cut into the gloves of Handscomb in the last over of the afternoon.<\/p>\n
When Madsen went cheaply for the second time in the match, seeing a defensive shot spin back onto the stumps, his side was in trouble on 52-3.<\/p>\n
Jewell resisted for 110 balls before he was lbw playing back to Ahmed and Leicestershire will be confident of completing a sixth victory on the final day to take another step closer to promotion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leicestershire closed in on another victory with England all-rounder Rehan Ahmed again playing a starring role on day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-289862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114912421932070669","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}