Steven Croft

The former skipper of Lancashire, Steven Croft is a professional English cricketer who will always go down in Lancashire history as the man who hit the winning runs to secure Championship title glory for the first time in 77 years when he did it on the fourth day against Somerset at Taunton in 2011.

Croft grew up learning to play cricket in Sri Lanka, arrived in Lancashire’s Academy in 2003, was awarded a scholarship in 2004 and made his first-class debut for the county at Oxford University in 2005. He secured his place in the playing XI with a bang in 2006 by hitting the last ball of a Twenty20 match against Leicestershire at Grace Road for six over cover to secure an unlikely win.

Croft was named as the club’s Player of the Year in 2012, after top-charting in every domestic competition for his County. Croft topped 800 Championship runs in a season twice in his career, in 2010 and again in 2015, the latter campaign seeing him harness spectacular form in the T20 Blast-winning season as well.

Croft skippered Lancashire to their maiden T20 Blast title in 2015 after Tom Smith’s injury ruled him out of all but one match in the year. He was appointed permanent captain ahead of 2016, a season which saw the club retain their Division One status in the County Championship for the first time in three attempts.

In 2017, he led the side to second place in the Championship, although he will count the summer as a pretty frustrating one disrupted by injury and loss of form. A formidable T20 batsman, Croft stockpiled 272 runs in the 2020 Vitality Blast, playing an integral part of Lancashire's run to Finals Day.

(As of May 2021)