Twenty 20 Blog

Thursday was the last day of Twenty20 cup before the counties went on a 16-day break for the ICC World Twenty20 which will be hosted by Lord’s, Oval and Trent Bridge from the 5th to the 21st of June.

Northern Division:

After a rather slow start to the campaign, Yorkshire seems to have come back strongly, and they registered an easy, eight-wicket win over Nottinghamshire. Batting first, the Notts got to a reasonable score of 155/6 in their allotted set of overs, all thanks to Adam Voges’ unbeaten knock of 82 that came off 55 deliveries. However, without any support at the other end, mainly brought about due to Naved-ul-Hasan Rana’s 4/23 in his four overs, the batting team could not get to more than their final score at a placid looking Headingley ground. Andrew Gale, however, put paid to any victory thoughts that the Notts would have entertained, by using 55 deliveries as well to smash 91 and his partnership of 129 with former English skipper Michael Vaughan sealed the match in the 18 overs. Yorkshire now has eight points from six games, while their opponents were left with 2 in as many games.

Leicestershire huffed and puffed to 144/6 at the County Ground, but then managed to restrict Derbyshire to 130/5 in the twenty overs to take the third spot in the table. The Leicestershire inning was buffered by a couple of 30s and 20s, but stalled by a 3/29 by Garry Park. Greg Smith continued with his good form to get to 43 but once he fell, the spin of Claude Henderson – 2/21 in four – restricted Derbyshire from getting to the required target.

Lancashire continued to maintain their clean slate by winning their sixth successive game against Durham to almost book their place in the quarter-finals. Apart from Gordan Muchall’s unbeaten 50 and his partnership of 52 with Phil Mustard, the Durham batting scorecard resembled a zip-code number as they crashed to 123/6 in twenty overs. Lancashire’s opener, Tom Smith led the way for his team and batted through the inning to hit a half-century and carry his team through to a six-wicket win in the final over of the match.

Midlands/Wales/West Division:

Bottom placed Glamorgan faced Worcestershire at the Sophia Gardens, but could do nothing to shift upwards in the points table. Worcestershire piled up a strong 164 in their twenty overs with contributions from Vikram Solanki, Moeen Ali and Stephen Moore. In reply, despite Jamie Darymple’s start of 25, Gareth Batty’s off-spin controlled the beginning and the middle overs very well and Glamorgan could manage only 135.

Zander de Bruyn’s unbeaten knock of 83 – another to miss a well-deserved 100 – took Somerset to 163/3 in the 20 overs after another failure from Marcus Trecothick’s bat. Northamptonshire never looked like they were in the match despite Ian Harvey’s 30 as former South African international Charl Willoughby scythed through the inning with a 4/29 in his four to win it for his team. De Bruyn won the player-of-the-match award for his controlled aggression.

Gloucestershire and Warwickshire were involved in a relatively close encounter; with the latter getting better of Gloucester in 19 overs and with four wickets to spare. Captain Ian Westwood (44 in 37) got the Warwickshire inning back on track after they were struggling at 92/5 chasing 136. With this loss, Gloucestershire continued to tie with Glamorgan with two points and a bottom spot in the table.

South Division:

The South Division had two contrasting games and results. The first saw Hampshire thrashing the living daylights out of Essex and move to the second position of the table, while the other game had a rain interruption and an ensuing two-run loss for Kent against Sussex!

Hampshire amassed the highest score of the day thanks to a century par excellence by Michael Lumb (124) and an ably supported 64 by Michael Carberry which got them to 219/2 in the 20 overs. Chasing 11 runs per over was never going to be easy for Essex as they crashed to 15/3 before recovering to post 144 all out in around 19 overs with a fifty from matt Walker.

In the second match, Sussex limped to 131/3 on a difficult pitch, and Kent looked like being on the track at 61/0 in 11 overs when bad weather intervened to leave the former winners by a couple of runs due to the Duckworth-Lewis system. Sussex thus moved to the top of the table, but they have played eight games, while the rest of the teams have played six and five respectively.

By Suneer Chowdhary, Twenty20Blog.co.uk