With James Vince on international duty for England’s first Test against Sri Lanka, batsman Will Smith steps in as Hampshire’s four-day captain ahead of Nottinghamshire’s visit to the The Ageas Bowl on Sunday in Specsavers County Championship Division One.
33-year-old Smith added invaluable experience to Hampshire’s squad when he joined ahead of the 2014 season, having been a title-winning captain for Durham in 2009, and now has 8,254 first-class runs to his name.
Will has a lot of first-class experience from his days at Durham, and being a senior player and a regular fixture in the four-day side it made sense for him to pick up the reigns in James’ absence. He’s the sort of character who can deal with captaincy really well, and he’s been a consistent performer with us during his time here - I’m sure he’ll be in the runs again soon.
Giles White, Director of Cricket
In his first season at the The Ageas Bowl in 2014, Smith reached over 1,000 County Championship runs for the first time in his career and, having proved a useful T20 bowling asset, he was named Players’ Player of the Year.
Smith’s first competitive match as skipper will be against Nottinghamshire on Sunday, with Hampshire looking to secure their first Specsavers County Championship win of 2016.
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Hampshire's clutch duo Ben Mayes (highest run-scorer) and Manny Lumsden (highest wicket-taker) have been named in the ICC Under-19 World Cup Team of the Tournament, selected by Ian Bishop, Lydia Greenway, Andy Flower and Telford Vice
The 10th edition of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup gets underway on 7 February, with Pakistan facing the Netherlands in the opening fixture. The tournament will be hosted across India and Sri Lanka, with the final set to take place on 8 March.
The South African-born right-hand bowler is involved in Scotland’s World Cup squad with the tournament commencing on Saturday 7th February.
