Anybody who saw Simon Kerrigan, now Lancashire’s senior spinner, take LV= County Championship hauls of 5-7 against Warwickshire and 9-51 against Hampshire in 2011 can testify that the county have a future star on their hands.
The left-arm spinner from Preston only played four matches during 2011, but his 24-wicket contribution as the second spinner was vital to their success.
If the capture of five wickets in the second innings at Edgbaston in May left you speechless, it was nothing compared to his haul at Liverpool in early September when Lancashire's title chances were hanging by the thinnest of threads.
The Red Rose had just over two sessions to bowl Hampshire out on a flat pitch in order to keep their title hopes alive going into the last week, and Keggsy, as he is otherwise known, came to the fore.
On the way to the club's best figures since 1953, he clinched a ninth win of the season with just four minutes of the match to spare when he forced Neil McKenzie to edge to Tom Smith at second slip.
It was a spell that coach Peter Moores described as "world-class".
Either side of that Hampshire haul, he gained international recognition in the form of a handful of one-day appearances for the England Lions and then a place in the elite group of England Performance Programme players for the tough winter's training schedule in India, where he has returned with the same squad in the build-up to 2013.
The wicket of South African McKenzie also earned him the Champagne Moment award at the club's annual awards ceremony at the end of the season.
And all of this from a chap who started out his career at Fulwood and Broughton as a medium pacer!
It also led to him being chosen ahead of veteran Gary Keedy as the club’s first choice spinner for 2012. And although the campaign ended in relegation from the Championship’s top tier, Kerrigan excelled with 44 wickets at 34.81 in a wet summer which did not suit spinners.
Kerrigan, who only played three CB40 matches in 2012 and no Twenty20s, took a total of 57 first-class wickets in the calendar year, including a six-wicket haul for the Lions against Australia A at Old Trafford in early August. It was his first-class debut for England’s second string.
Another of the club's Academy graduates, Kerrigan signed professional terms ahead of the 2009 season, but got his chance at the start of 2010 when fellow left-armer Keedy, now at Surrey, broke his collarbone.
He quickly found his feet with a debut Championship five-for against Warwickshire, taking six against Essex shortly afterwards and then five against county champions Nottinghamshire in the final week of the season. All three hauls came at Old Trafford.
He finished the campaign with 30 wickets at 32.23, also claiming eleven wickets in his debut Twenty20 campaign and being named as Lancashire's Young Player of the Year.
Kerrigan has played his club cricket for Liverpool Competition side Ormskirk in recent years, and was Lancashire's leading wicket-taker in second-team cricket in 2009, giving him the perfect platform to make the step up the following summer.
He also spent some time bowling to the full England squad in the nets in the build-up to a Test match at Edgbaston during 2010 and again during the latter stages of 2011 in Dubai ahead of the senior Test tour to India.
The way Kerrigan is going, it won't be long before he is there with them on merit!
Graham Hardcastle
(c) Lancashire CCC Ltd
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