Miles Hammond on Marchant de Lange: "He's an absolute lion, the life and soul"

The Gloucestershire batter was speaking as the latest guest on The Cricketer's County Conversation podcast following the club's first red-ball win in 18 months

Gloucestershire batter Miles Hammond heaped praise on Marchant de Lange after the South African quick bowled the county to a first County Championship win in 593 days, ending an 18-game winless run.

Hammond, who set the game up with a first-innings hundred, called de Lange "an absolute lion" and "the life and soul" of a Gloucestershire dressing room that celebrated with a wild mixture of excitement and relief after Ajeet Singh Dale took the final wicket at Wantage Road against Northamptonshire to end a lengthy wait.

De Lange, 33, took eight wickets in the match and swung away a brutal unbeaten 36 with the bat. He is the second-highest wicket-taker in Division Two, behind only Jayden Seales.

"I don't know how he does it," Hammond told The Cricketer's County Conversation podcast. "I think he's ruptured something in his ankle but still bowled 95mph. I don't know if he's half-human, half-I-don't-know, but he is amazing.

"In this game in both innings he's pretty much won us the game with that spell in the first innings – getting two in the same over, huge wickets – and then coming in on the last day and turning the game again when we thought this was starting to get a little bit tougher. I can't overstate the impact he's had this year.

"He is absolutely mad. But absolutely the life and soul. He wants the ball all the time, he wants to bowl all the time. Even if he says that in this innings he's just going to try and hit the top of off with accuracy and flying at about 60 per cent, he then three balls later is bowling a 90mph bumper. He is very excitable, loves the battle, loves winning. He's brilliant."

^{Miles Hammond made his fourth first-class century at Wantage Road (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)}

Gloucestershire's attack has been lauded so far this summer, with The Cricketer extensively covering a pack of seamers that might just be the quickest on the county circuit. Certainly, de Lange, Singh Dale and Zaman Akhter have all consistently been clocked at upwards of 85mph.

De Lange hit Northamptonshire's India batter Karun Nair on the helmet during the last round of fixtures, a blow that Hammond described as "horrendous, probably one of the hardest I've seen someone get hit in a game".

On the South African, he continued: "He is obviously at one end of his career at the minute, and he's still getting the job done bowling quick. The quickest bowler on show easily in every game he's played in.

"I faced him at Derby in their indoor school, and it was only off a short run but I was still very wary of the fact that he could scone me at any point. His action is tough, he's quite hard to pick up; he slams every ball down, so every ball feels like it's going to be a bumper, and when it does come, it takes you by surprise. Not many people have played him very easily this year."

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