MANY amateur cricketers spend a lifetime in the game without treading the hallowed turf of its spiritual home at Lords - but a local lad is set to do that at just 19!

Take a bow, talented teenager David Leather, of Knowsley Road, who has been selected in the National Association of Young Cricketers' side to face an MCC Schools eleven next Wednesday, July 16.

An hard-hitting batsman and hostile fast bowler, David has also been named in the squad to face the Zimbabwe touring team at Cricket's headquarters later in the season.

A former pupil of St. Teresa's and De La Salle schools and a youngster who had a bat and ball in his hands from age eight, David was an England and Lancashire Schools choice and it was inevitable that he cut his senior cricketing teeth with St. Helens Recs, where his dad Geoff skippered the Liverpool Competition championship side of 1978.

Now a vital member of the Widnes team which figures in the Cheshire League, the lethal Leather spent a season at Old Trafford at the invitation of coach David Lloyd and is hoping to be offered at contract by Worcestershire, while Leicestershire team manager Jack Birkenshaw has also expressed an interest in his future

But despite an on-going success story which appears to know no boundaries, including several centuries and many bumper wicket hauls, lithe 6ft 2in David Leather is a young man with his feet firmly on the ground, as enrolment for a PE and sporting science degree at Loughborough University in September would suggest.

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