National Counties Products in England Lions Squad

Five products of National Counties cricket have been included in the England Lions squad for a month-long tour of South Africa which starts next month.

Gloucestershire pace bowler Zaman Akhter, Yorkshire leg-spinner Jafer Chohan, Sussex batter James Coles, Nottinghamshire fast bowler Dillon Pennington and Lancashire seamer Mitchell Stanley all played their formative county cricket for one of the 20 National Counties – formerly Minor Counties – before joining the first-class ranks.

Akhter played for Cambridgeshire, his native county in 2018 and 2019 before moving to Hertfordshire for the 2021 and 2022 seasons before joining Gloucestershire in 2023.

Chohan also first came to prominence in 2022 when he was part of Berkshire’s National Counties Trophy-winning squad and went on to be part of the National Counties XI who reached the final of the European T10 Championship in Spain.

Coles, a former pupil of Magdalen College School, was the first product of the pathway partnership between Oxfordshire and Sussex to make his first team debut for the first-class county in 2020.

He played for Oxfordshire through their age groups through to the senior side and was a member of the side that won the National Counties T20 competition in 2022.

Pennington and Stanley both played their first senior county cricket for Shropshire having progressed through the age groups of their native county.

Pennington made his debut for Shropshire in 2017 and Stanley his in 2021. Both then joined Worcestershire before switching counties for the season that has just finished.

In addition to that quintet three more players with National Counties experience have been included in the England Lions squad for the tour which will include a four-day match against South Africa A.

Derbyshire pace bowler Pat Brown played for Lincolnshire in 2016 before he was signed by Worcestershire on a scholarship after he began studying at Worcester University.

Warwickshire batter Dan Mousley played a three-day match for Staffordshire against Suffolk in June 2019, a month before he made his first-class debut and Sussex seamer Henry Crocombe helped Oxfordshire complete a T20 double over Wales NC at Wormsley in May as part of the partnership between the two counties.