Ryan Campbell names unchanged squad for home T20 Blast opener

To be honest, I’m not sure I can reflect on that performance. I didn’t see it coming but it’s one of those things in T20. It’s like being in quicksand, the harder you try to get out, the deeper in you get.

Aspinwall bowled beautifully, he bowled fast and we tried to fight the pace instead of go with it and once you’re in that sort of trouble, you’re in massive trouble.

But the joy of T20 is that you bank it and you move on. As a team, we know that wasn’t good enough but we also know that we’re bloody good. That won’t change after one night, it’ll be good to get back to the Riverside tomorrow, I hear there are amazing ticket sales and we’ll look forward to putting on a show.

We’ve just had a minute in the dressing room but there are not always answers and that’s the thing about T20 – it goes bang bang bang so fast that you can’t put your hand up and say “stop, let’s take a breath.” But all credit to Lancashire: they put on a show for their fans, they played good cricket and we didn’t. But we’ll take it on the chin and get back to our best very quickly.

Squad v Birmingham Bears (31 May) 

Colin Ackermann, Graham Clark, Paul Coughlin, Ben Dwarshuis, Alex Lees*, Haydon Mustard, Callum Parkinson, Matthew Potts, Ben Raine, Ollie Robinson+, Nathan Sowter, Ashton Turner, Michael Jones

Opposition Corner 

Captain: Alex Davies

Overseas players: Hasan Ali (Pakistan), Aamir Jamal (Pakistan)

Finals Day appearances: Four (2003, 2014, 2015, 2017)

Titles: One (2014)

2023 finish: Quarter-finals

2023 leading run-scorer: Sam Hain (481)

2023 leading wicket-taker: Dan Mousley (21)

Key winter moves: The Bears have fleshed out their bowling options with the signings of seamers George Garton and Richard Gleeson. Garton has signed a three-year T20 contract while 36-year-old Gleeson has signed just for this year.

The big question: Can the Bears overcome the knockout freeze that has seen them exit the tournament at the quarter-final stage in the past three seasons? In recent years they have played some scintillating T20 cricket during the group stage but choked when the format turned to all-or-nothing.

Wildcard watch: All-rounder Ed Barnard’s form in his first season and a half since arriving from Worcestershire has been hugely impressive, especially with the bat. He has the tools and the talent to radically improve on his forgettable first T20 campaign for the Bears last year.

Match Centre

The Club’s match centre will be in operation for the fixture with live scorecards, statistics & video highlights as they happen. You can watch the game live via Durham’s match centre and Durham YouTube channel. Durham Cricket will have full coverage on social media, with a full match report at the close.