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Buck looking to seize opportunity

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Lancashire head into the LV= County Championship campaign armed with a new-look seam attack and that means opportunity knocks for new signing Nathan Buck.

Since last season, the Red Rose have lost Kyle Hogg to retirement, released shoulder-injury victim Kabir Ali and scaled back Glen Chapple's on-field commitments to allow the 41-year-old to continue his transition into coaching.

That is a lot of slack for somebody to pick up and Buck hopes a change of scenery will help him answer the call after swapping Leicestershire for Emirates Old Trafford last September.

Lancashire were impressed when the 23-year-old took 42 wickets in nine Division Two matches last time around and a similar haul at the same level would go a long way to restoring Ashley Giles' men's top-flight status.

"Obviously there's a lot of strength in depth with the bowling here now," Buck told ecb.co.uk.

After joining Lancashire from Leicestershire, Nathan Buck said: "If things go really well for me I'd love to lead the attack here."

"We've got a good attack but in order to win Division Two you need that.

"We've got five or six top-class bowlers now so it's going to be a squad effort to win those 16 games. If things go really well for me I'd love to lead the attack here and go from there."

Having represented his country at youth level and England Lions, where he worked with Giles, Buck sees Lancashire as the perfect destination to fulfil his potential. 

The paceman knows he can feed off Giles and Chapple's extensive experience while he will soon be calling some of the best exponents of seam bowling his team-mates when James Anderson,Peter Siddle and James Faulkner link up with the county.

Buck added: "I'm trying to develop my career and I saw an opportunity that could help myself and I can hopefully help Lancs move forward.  

"Hopefully the two come together and there's a good couple of seasons for myself and for Lancs.

"It was pretty easy to make the choice up here. It's a Test ground and one of the better grounds on the circuit.

"I saw myself having a decent opportunity up here. The likes of Chappie and Kyle Hogg are knocking around and Jimmy Anderson's here now and again.

"It's drawing on their experiences really. It's been pretty good so far and I think they can only add to it."

How much time Chapple spends as a team-mate to Buck, rather than a mentor, remains to be seen. 

It looked like the evergreen seamer had dropped a hint when he donned coach's attire for the team photographs at the club's recent media day but the door remains ajar if Giles decides to use him on the field.

And, even if personal accolades do not primarily motivate Chapple, the landmark of 1,000 first-class wickets is a tantalising 25 scalps away.

"I'm still available to play but we'll make those decisions on a game-by-game basis with two priorities – one, to win games of cricket and two, to develop our squad for the future," said Chapple, who is set to miss their opening match at Derbyshire with a calf injury.

"(Getting to 1,000) is an incentive. I don't put much into personal milestones but that is one which is pretty difficult to achieve. You've got to have a lot of luck to be able to hang around to be able to get it.

"It's probably on a knife-edge because 25's not an insignificant amount of wickets at my age to take. Fingers crossed, if I get selected and then stay fit, it might happen. If not, I've got other things to focus on."


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