Amidst sparse crowds and cries of overkill of cricket, the first day of the Twenty20 Cup saw three of the games going right down to the wire, one that had bad light ending play and another that saw the defending champions being dumped by the wayside!
North Division
Out of the six teams, four were in action and both games were a ripper. Nottinghamshire were beaten off the last delivery of the game by Durham, thanks to impressive half centuries by international discards, Ian Blackwell and Dale Benkenstein. The latter’s dismissal did ensue a later collapse, but Mitchell Claydon smashed a four off the last delivery to seal a narrow one wicket win. This, after only one run was needed at the start of the final over!
The other game had last season’s disqualified team, Yorkshire, huffing and puffing to a victory with only a ball to spare. After having restricted the Leicestershire inning to a modest 148/3 in the 20 overs thanks to Hylton Ackerman’s half century, Yorkshire began well but made heavy weather of chasing down the total. 110/2 became 125/7 and with 22 required in the final two overs, the game looked to have gone begging. Michael Vaughan scored a 30-ball 35 to signal his intentions before the Ashes. However, Ajmal Shahzad smashed a 16 off the penultimate over, and scampered around for the remaining six runs and pouched the game.
Midlands/Wales/West Division
The Northants won their game against Warwickshire with ease, despite James Troughton’s 39-ball 52. This was mainly due to Ian Harvey’s 4/18 in the four overs of deceit that he threw at the batsmen. Earlier, there were three 40s by the Northants batsmen, including skipper Nicky Boje’s 30-ball 45, that propelled their score to 176/6 in the twenty.
Worcestershire played bad hosts to Gloucestershire as they beat them convincingly by 23 runs. Chasing 146 for a win, the team did not look too much in hunt, and lost wickets at regular intervals. Ireland had only recently boosted their chances at the ICC World T20 by getting the better of the Vikram Solanki-led Worcestershire, but his team offered no such mercies for Gloucestershire as the latter collapsed from 41/0 to 93/9 before some late hitting by Jonathan Lewis took them to 122 all out.
And the third encounter in this division had Glamorgan doing a Mumbai Indians and failing to chase a lowly total of 113 against Somerset! Somerset’s inning was a story of one man’s batting; Zander de Bruyn – who has represented South Africa in a test against India – scoring a 70 out of his team’s paltry total. Glamorgan did lose a couple of early wickets, but looked pretty at 94/4 to get two points. Instead, leg-spinner Max Waller scripted a dramatic turn-around by snatching 3/17 in his four overs and the side collapsed to requiring three runs off the last delivery. South African international Garnett Kruger managed a solitary run, and Somerset had won by a single.
South Division
Hampshire crushed Sussex by a whopping margin of nine wickets thanks to a blistering inning of 68 that came off only 49 deliveries and his unbeaten association of 110 runs with Sean Ervine. Earlier, Dwayne Smith continued the form he exhibited for the Deccan Chargers to smash a 63 in 46 balls, but there wasn’t too much support forthcoming and Sussex ended on 133 in their 20 overs.
Last year’s runners-up, Kent, and losing semi-finalists, Essex, had to be content with a point each as bad light stopped the play in the second inning of the game. Essex looked to be in the process of deriving sweet revenge for their previous year’s semi-final loss, with Alistair Cook bull-dozing the Kent attack with a 56-ball 80 that propped the Essex total to 187/7 in the 20 overs. In reply, kent had a rather sluggish start and were 16/0 in 20 deliveries when the batsmen were offered the light.
Defending champions Middlesex were routed by a resurgent Surrey side at Lord’s by a margin of 57 runs. Surrey got to 186/1 batting first thanks to former English international, Usman Afzaal ‘s belligerent 98, that came off only 59 deliveries and a supporting knock of 61 by the 39-year old Mark Ramprakash. In reply, Middlesex never looked in charge, as they lost wickets at regular intervals to go down with a whimper. Tyron Henderson, Rajasthan Royal’s costliest purchase this year, and previous season’s best all-rounder hit the highest score of 32. Chris Schofield impressed the sparse crowd with his 3/21 in four overs.
By Suneer Chowdhary, Twenty20Blog.co.uk
Loading ...