Openers ease Leicestershire to victory

Leicestershire 276 and 170 for 0 beat Derbyshire 182 and 262 by 10 wickets
Scorecard

Matthew Boyce and Greg Smith steered Leicestershire to their fifth County Championship win of the season as Matthew Hoggard took his 700th first-class wicket at Grace Road.

The two young openers successfully chased down a target of 169 to give Leicestershire a 10-wicket victory and send bottom-of-the-table Derbyshire crashing to their sixth defeat of the season and their fifth in the last seven games.

Boyce, who will be 25 later this month, made 86 and 21-year-old Smith added 52, scoring the runs in 40.4 overs. But It was also a memorable day for Leicestershire captain Hoggard. The 33-year-old former Yorkshire and England seamer claimed the 700th first-class wicket of his career when he had Chesney Hughes lbw during a morning session that saw Derbyshire lose their last five wickets for 22 runs - a collapse that set up the victory opportunity for Leicestershire.

At the start of play the game looked evenly balanced with Derbyshire on 238 for 5 and leading by 144 runs. But the innings folded alarmingly as Hoggard and Nathan Buck tore through the tail. Hoggard struck first by bowling Robin Peterson with a perfect yorker in the second over of the morning and he then dismissed Hughes to give him his landmark wicket, 14 years after he took his first.

Buck finished off Derbyshire's innings by picking up three wickets for two runs in three overs to claim figures of four for 60. He bowled Steffan Jones for the first and then had Lee Goddard and Tim Groenewald caught by Tom New. Derbyshire's slump to 262 all out left Leicestershire a target of 169, but with the ball still swinging and seaming around in overcast conditions it could still have been a tricky proposition.

But some wayward bowling and sloppy fielding plus 32 extras helped Leicestershire's cause as Boyce and Smith cashed in. They both played splendidly, punishing the bad deliveries with boundaries and fully deserved their half-centuries.

Boyce's came off 99 balls when he completed it with a six and a four during one over off Peterson. Smith reached his 50 off 98 balls but it was Boyce who struck the winning boundary off Smith with 45 overs still remaining in the day.

It was Leicestershire's first Championship win at home since they beat Northamptonshire in their opening fixture and their first in any form of cricket at Grace Road since April. They picked up 21 points for the win to keep them in contention for one of the Division Two promotion places.