Ball one: Pope and Scrimshaw immaculate
On the field and off, things move very quickly in the T20 Blast, as illustrated in Sunday’s top-of-the-table clash between Lancashire and Northamptonshire in the North Group at Old Trafford.
Lancashire had suffered their first defeat of the campaign earlier in the week to Leicestershire but had the chance to retain top spot with a home win. Northamptonshire, having elected to bat, never really got going, the home side’s England men, James Anderson and Liam Livingstone, sharing five wickets as David Willey top scored with 37.
With a gettable 181 to chase, Lancashire’s reply was curiously similar, no partnership realising more than the 34 between top scorer Michael Jones and Jack Blatherwick for the seventh wicket. Australian leg-spinner Lloyd Pope and pacer George Scrimshaw were the key men, taking six for 46 from their eight overs as the home side toiled in vain.
Northamptonshire are top of the group with a 100% record after five matches. Lancashire are still handily placed in second, but need to arrest their mini slide.
Ball two: the Chohan stumps re-arranger
Leicestershire, with three wins from four, travelled to Headingley to face winless Yorkshire and … got hammered.
The stuffing was knocked out of the visitors by a 132-run partnership between Dawid Malan and William Luxton as the home side piled up 213 for seven. Luxton seems to have been around for ages, but he turned 22 last month and must hope that his 62, from No 3, can get his season off to a belated start.
It’s easy to crash and burn when chasing more than 10 an over and Leicestershire, with Shan Masood the ex-White Rose skipper in their ranks, were all out after scoring just half of their target. Of the four spinners Malan used, the most impressive was another 22-year-old, Jafer Chohan, whose four for 27 underlined his potential. He has played four matches in Australia’s Big Bash and, after three wicketless outings in the Blast, has now repaid the faith shown in him by his captain.
Ball three: Turner needs to turn out
Despite suffering a first defeat to Kent, Hampshire head the group of three teams with 12 points at the top of the South Group. That can happen when you win two matches on consecutive days, as they did on Thursday and Friday,
The second of those was a pasting of Gloucestershire at the Utilita Bowl (as ugly a name as the Rose Bowl is lovely), the visitors subsiding from 90 for three to 119 all out from which the champions could find no way back.
A fine effort by the bowling unit was led by John Turner, who has four England caps in white-ball cricket but had to go on loan earlier this season to play first-class cricket. Like Shoaib Bashir, he’s a highly promising prospect who, despite the fact that we’re always being told that there’s too much cricket, doesn’t play enough. Two months into the season, despite his best efforts, he has bowled just 114 overs. He holds an England development contract – surely that can manage workloads up as well as down?
Ball four: Somerset’s sunny start
Somerset beat their fellow 12-pointers, Sussex, to maintain their 100% record in the South Group, nestling just behind their vanquished hosts on net run rate having played a game fewer.
Each of their four international seamers (Craig Overton, Matt Henry, Lewis Gregory, back bowling again, and Riley Meredith) chipped in with a wicket, and the four Toms (Lammonby, Kohler-Cadmore, Abell and Rew) mowed down the target with 12 balls to spare.
Cricket, especially T20 cricket when you can run into a hot batter or bowler who can win a match on their own, seldom grants dominance to a simple formula, but Somerset are making a compelling case against that assertion. With three batters averaging over 34 at strike rates over 140, and three bowlers with economy rates under seven, it can be an easy game. They will take some stopping.
Ball five: showers bring sixfers
The stars of T20 tend to be batters. They get the big hits, the big cheers from the crowds and the big posters advertising future attractions. It’s no surprise really – the game is set up for them, bowlers restricted so much in where and how they can bowl.
Not Ben Sanderson, not this week anyway. At New Road, he returned the John Player Sunday League-esque figures of 4-0-8-6, including a hat-trick as Worcestershire lost four wickets in the 19th over.
Not to be outdone, just a couple of days later another canny pacer, Hasan Ali, also picked up a six-wicket haul for the Birmingham Bears to deliver a win over hapless Derbyshire, also bagging a hat-trick en route. After such a dry April and May, it’s June that has brought a little rain and some much-needed assistance to the medium pacers tiring of looking for a smidgeon of green on those brownish fields of spring.
Ball six: bloody hell?
Sky Sports’ coverage of the match between Nottinghamshire and Worcestershire at Trent Bridge struck a jolly tone, with not too many stats but plenty of boys’ banter from Corky and Croft complemented by Lydia Greenway’s schoolteacher-letting-her-hair-down vibe. That won’t be to everyone’s taste but, allied to the always fantastic camerawork, it’s an approach that works for cricket that is professional but not glum; the bursts of music are unnecessarily intrusive though.
There was, however, an incident that jarred. As Adam Hose and Kashif Ali were teeing off on the way to setting a winning target for the home side, a youngish bloke was picked out, very briefly, in the crowd with “claret” (it’s always “claret”) spilling from a head wound. He was attended to and was soon back in his seat and cavorting for the camera. The commentators reminded us of the importance of keeping your eye on the ball.
Is that enough though? The Blast is a cavalcade of distractions, anxiety about allowing a second’s worth of dead air as prevalent in T20 cricket as it is in any other form of entertainment these days. Moreover, and I accept that this may be confirmation bias, there seems to be more flat hits spearing into crowds sitting on short boundaries this season than ever. I’m not sure much can be done, but a serious incident is not a zero chance risk and I’m unconvinced that all the necessary mitigation is in place, cricket shouldn’t be leaving the answer to that conjecture for future lawyers.
This article is from The 99.94 Cricket Blog
