The Hundred: Yorkshire’s David Willey steps up to captain Northern Superchargers against Manchester Originals

That isn’t to suggest that the Yorkshire all-rounder Willey has any issue at being the decision-maker out on the field of play, he would just prefer first-choice captain Faf du Plessis to assume his rightful place.

The South African is currently unavailable for a third game running, having missed the defeats to Welsh Fire and Trent Rockets due to suffering concussion-like symptoms.

All-rounder Ben Stokes stood in as captain for the first two games but, due to his being recalled by England to prepare for the forthcoming Test series against India, Willey - who has experience as Yorkshire Vikings’ T20 captain - is next in line.

And while pressure may be mounting on Darren Lehmann’s team having lost those first two games, Willey said nobody is pressing the panic button just yet.

“The shorter the format, the smaller the margins it seems,” said Willey. “And in both games we’ve come pretty close really.

“It’s just highlighting the importance of critical moments of the game, even more so than in T20. Both of these games, on another day we could easily have come out on the other side of.”

On his role as captain, however temporary, Willey added: “Hopefully it’s just for the one game and we can get Faf back as soon as possible.

“I’m just standing in and I’ll try to do my best for however long that is. Obviously, Faf’s struggling a bit still with concussion and return to play and we’re losing Stokesy as well. They asked me if I’d like to do it and I said, yes, of course. Obviously I do it at Yorkshire anyway and I know quite a lot of the boys as well.”

Tonight’s clash against the Originals starts at 6.30pm

The Superchargers’ women’s team play their Originals counterparts at 3pm, where they hope to maintain their 100 per cent start to the competition after winning their opening two games.