Mark Chilton looks for Lancashire to more clinical to get off the mark

The 31-run defeat at defending Division One champions Essex with more than a day to spare means it’s back-to-back losses to start the new campaign.

The four-day games come thick and fast in the early part of the summer with Surrey the next visitors to Old Trafford on Friday.

“I don’t think the players need picking up, so to speak,” said Chilton.

“We’ve lost two games but that shows what a competitive league this is.

“We just have to regroup. We know we’ve got a lot of good players in our side, it’s just trying to bring the unit together to try and identify areas in our game where we can be a little more clinical.”

Lancashire made a good fist of chasing down 320 to win in the final innings at Chelmsford on Sunday with Alex Davies, Jordan Clark and Joe Mennie all scoring half-centuries.

Mennie, who departed for 56 after a 91-ball cameo, thumped three sixes in an innings that only ended when Jamie Porter removed his leg-stump to end the game.

Davies had taken the fight to Essex for 39 overs while compiling a flawless 71 before he was knocked off his feet by Porter after facing 85 balls and hitting 11 fours.

Clark, 59, took up the gauntlet upon Davies’ departure but when he was eighth man out, with 77 runs required, the Red Rose wilted visibly as they finished 32 runs short.

“Joe played wonderfully at the end and Matt Parkinson was doing a tremendous job,” said Chilton

“But in cases like this if you are leaving it to the 10th wicket to chase 70 runs down you are asking quite a lot.

“We were very positive about the chase at the start of the day.

“It was recognised that the pitch had settle a bit. I thought if we’d played really well we would have knocked the runs off but the two wickets after lunch did the damage.

“We don’t tend to debrief immediately after the game because we don’t feel it has great value. We let people digest what’s happened.

“When we get together later in the week we’ll discuss areas where we hope to improve our play for Surrey.”