Cricket: Lyons and Saltires return south on a winning high

Carlton star Lyons, one of Cricket Scotland's seven full time contractees, shared in that A success against Leicestershire 2nds at Ashby-de-la-Zouch on Thursday and hopes there will be a carry over into the latest Clydesdale Bank 40 series matches at Hampshire tomorrow and Kent on Monday.

Says Lyons: "It isn't every season that Scotland do the double over an English county at 1st and 2nd team level bearing in mind the Saltires opened the Clydesdale Bank competition with a win at Leicester.

"There's a feelgood factor around to add to the fact we weren't terribly far away from defeating Notts last weekend in Edinburgh."

That match marked the return of left-arm spinner Lyons who celebrated by dismissing top scorer Alex Hales to a brilliant running catch by Neil McCallum in taking the ball off his shins at "cow corner".

Now Lyons intends to remain a fixture with a special incentive looming.

"We've a match coming up against England at citylets Grange on 19 June and, although I played last year, I didn't get to bowl because the weather intervened.

"First, though, we have got to focus entirely on the two games this weekend when I hope to be given another opportunity to build on the Notts outing.

"Having been released to play for Carlton the previous day and been pretty annoyed with myself when my nine overs went for 70 runs I didn't have high expectations of a Saltires recall.

"However, as soon as I arrived at the ground (coach] Pete Steindl told me I was in and there wasn't much time to think about the call-up which was probably to my advantage.

"Things went reasonably well with the ball and I still felt we had a chance when I went out to bat with Richie Berrington as last man."

Alas, the Saltires fell 43 runs short with four and a half overs to spare but Lyons had every right to back himself having registered a top score of 80 in the premiership last season – and that before he started spending extra time developing his batting.

Added Lyons: "Being a full-timer has allowed me to spend extra time working with Pete Steindl on my batting this season and at the moment we are concentrating on dealing with the short delivery.

"That probably explains why I have been out twice this season to hook shots but I'm confident of working my way up the order both for club and country."

Club cricket has certainly taken on fresh impetus with the selectors rewarding domestic form. This was shown by Grange's Gregor Maiden and West's Dougie Lockhart who was part of the A side which recorded that remarkable eight-wicket win when a target of 233 from 49 overs was passed with ten balls to spare thanks largely to Ryan Flannigan (82) and centurion Preston Mommsen with Lyons having taken 3-78 off 28 overs in the first innings..

But, if Leicestershire are sick of the sight of Scottish teams, so too is Dominic Cork, Hampshire's former England all-rounder.

Cork has twice been on the receiving end of defeats by Scotland while at Lancashire and said: "I know only too well from bitter experience that the Saltires will come down here with nothing to lose and will want to repeat what they did to Leicestershire a fortnight ago.

"We know they are in a bit of a transitional phase.

"But we know Gavin Hamilton is a real cricket person and we've noticed that others such as Bailey and Berrington have already scored good runs in the tournament."

In fact, Berrington stands on the brink of a fourth successive half century against English county opposition and, in a further boost, Saltires won away to Kent in 2009.

Saltires squad: Gavin Hamilton (c), Omer Hussain, George Bailey, Freddie Coleman, Richie Berrington, Gregor Maiden, Neil McCallum, Dougie Lockhart (w/k), Gordon Drummond, Majid Haq, Ross Lyons, Gordon Goudie, Neil Laidlaw.