Twenty20 Statwatch

Jim Allenby has broken the record for runs scored in a Twenty20 Cup campaign for Leicestershire.

The all-rounder made 432 in ten innings this summer, beating HD Ackerman’s previous best of 409 scored in the 2006 winning season.

The highlight of Allenby’s competition was undoubtedly the 110 he made from just 58 balls against Notts at Grace Road.

His century came from just 54 balls – the same as the only hundred previously scored in the cup by Darren Maddy at Yorkshire.

The innings was just two runs short of setting a new record of the highest score in the competition, but Maddy’s 111 still holds sway.

Allenby’s runs came form just 309 balls faced in total, giving him an incredible strike-rate of 139.80 over the ten innings.

Allenby smashed thirty-eight fours and twenty sixes along the way, and when you consider every other batsman hit 13 maximums between them, that is a great achievement.

Meanwhile, Claude Henderson’s eleven wickets this term puts him into second place in the leading all-time wicket takers for the Foxes in the competition.

The slow left-armer now has 35 victims, which is just one short of Jeremy Snape’s record.

Iain O’Brien’s 5-23 ensured he also entered the record books as the second bowler to take a five-for in T20 history for the club.

Allenby leads the way with 5-21 against Lancs in 2008, which included the unprecedented achievement of taking four wickets in four balls. The all-rounder also has another to his name with 5-27 against Derbyshire in the same season.

O’Brien’s figures sit neatly inbetween those two spells, and was therefore the third five-wicket haul in T20 for the Foxes.

Earlier in the campaign, Paul Nixon became the third batsman to reach 1,000 runs for County in Twenty20 history behind Maddy and Ackerman.

The club captain also appeared in all ten games this term, meaning he has played in every single one of Leicestershire’s games where a side has been named.

The Foxes should have played 63 games in all, but with six abandoned without a ball being bowled, Nixon holds the impressive feat of being named in every one of County’s 57 matches.

Wayne White also had a good tournament by taking ten wickets and ten catches for the team.

Those catches were the second most taken by an outfielder in a single season, behind Maddy’s 12 held in the 2006 winning campaign.