Haseeb Hameed scores his maiden first-class fifty since India tour

The young England opener Haseeb Hammed finally had a good outing in the longer format as he scored his first fifty in FC since getting injured during the tour of India in last December. After injuring his finger during the Indian tour, Hameed was ruled out from the tour and missed out playing the last two Tests. Keaton Jennings, who played the last two Tests in India was continued in the South Africa Test series despite his consistent failures.

At the same time, Hammed couldn’t make a mark with the bat after recovering from the injury. Playing against Hampshire at the Southampton, Hammed scored an unbeaten 77 in the 2nd innings for Lancashire on Monday. This was his first fifty in first-class cricket since his unbeaten 59 at Mohali against India after which he was ruled out of the tour.

String of low scores

In between these two fifties, Haseeb Hameed featured in 20 first-class innings and managed to aggregate only 262 runs at an average of 14.56. His 47 against Essex in the first county championship game of the season was the best of the 20 outings. He scored a 45 in the same game but failed to go past twenty in 16 of the remaining 18 innings.

His innings of 77 showed the determination of spending time in the middle after Paul Farbrace’s statement last week in which he said about having an eye on him during this game given the inconsistency of the current openers, which is a worrying sign ahead of the Ashes which is due to be played later this year. Alastair Cook scored 268 runs with two fifties while Jennings averaged 15.87 without a fifty in the 8 innings during the South Africa series.

Haseeb Hameed scored those 77 runs in 219 balls by batting out for 309 minutes before the close of 2nd day’s play while the remaining Lancashire batsmen collectively scored 221 runs at a strike-rate of 92.86 as the visiting side ended the day on 314/5 with a lead of 239 runs in their kitty. Lancashire were bowled out for just 149 in their first innings and conceded a lead of 75 runs to Hampshire who scored 224.