Attention turns to the Rothesay County Championship for Northamptonshire with a big trip to Emirates Old Trafford to face Lancashire starting this Thursday.
It’s the first Championship cricket that has been played since June, with a run of six games to now conclude the 2026 season.
T20 Blast success and a mixed One Day Cup campaign have followed and with promotion still on the line to Division One, 2026 could yet have another historic moment.
Match Information:
The fixture is part of Lancashire’s inaugural Red Ball Celebration which is aimed at celebrating red ball cricket with a variety of activities going on throughout all four days. Northamptonshire fans can get tickets at a discounted price by following the link here.
Play will start at 11am on each day, with the toss scheduled for 10:30am on day one.
A live stream will be provided by the host county, and you can follow all of the action with live match updates on our social media channels.
Squad news:
Head Coach Darren Lehmann has named a 13-man squad for the trip to Emirates Old Trafford.
Northamptonshire are at full strength for the trip to face the Red Rose, with Calvin Harrison, Louis Kimber, Ben Sanderson, James Sales, George Scrimshaw and Saif Zaib all returning after their involvement in The Hundred.
Ricardo Vasconcelos has recovered from a slight injury and and Lewis McManus is back with the side after missing our final One Day Cup fixture.
Northamptonshire squad to face Lancashire:
Luke Procter (c), George Bartlett, Yuzi Chahal, Liam Guthrie, Calvin Harrison, Louis Kimber, Lewis McManus (wk), Nathan McSweeney, Ben Sanderson, James Sales, George Scrimshaw, Ricardo Vasconcelos, Saif Zaib
We caught up with Darren Lehmann to discuss the return of first-class cricket, the aim of promotion and the transition from white to red ball.
Last time out:
Northamptonshire and Lancashire played an exhilarating draw in the opening fixture of the 2026 County Championship season at the cinch County Ground.
The visitors chose to bat first and big scores from Josh Bohannon (90), Luke Wells (87) and Michael Jones (71) made that look like the correct decision, despite this Ben Sanderson was able to pick up a five-wicket haul in the innings.
Northamptonshire found themselves 41 for five after James Anderson picked up four wickets, ultimately going on to get his five-for, but a Lewis McManus 75 and contributions from Louis Kimber and George Bartlett got the total to 258, 126 behind.
Four wickets each for Harry Conway and Calvin Harrison meant that Lancashire only managed 194 in the second innings, setting a total to chase of 320.
In the end, a heroic 95* from Bartlett, as well as some gritty batting late in the day from Sanderson, secured a draw that helped kickstart Northamptonshire’s season.
Opposition Preview:
Captain: Sir James Anderson
Head coach: Steven Croft
2025 finish: 5th
2025 leading run-scorer: Luke Wells (1,074)
2025 leading wicket-taker: George Balderson (40)
Lancashire are currently sat seventh in Division Two after eight games and will require a really strong run of results to challenge for promotion.
Sir James Anderson has once again delivered with the ball for Lancashire with 38 wickets at an average of 17.26 and with the bat, Australian Marcus Harris is their leading run scorer, despite only playing six games, with 535 runs at an average of just under 50.
This summer’s white ball cricket saw Lancashire just miss out on a spot in the T20 Blast quarter-finals, finishing third in the North Group, but without enough points for qualification.
The One Day Cup was slightly more successful as they did achieve a quarter-final spot, it was, however, a convincing 162-run defeat in Manchester against Durham in that fixture.
Lancashire will hope that small up tick in form is something they can build on in the remaining County Championship matches after defeat in both of the June fixtures to Kent and Derbyshire.