Storm Somerset
August 9. Vitality Blast T20. Hampshire v Somerset
Somerset 202; Hampshire 69/6 12.1 overs. Somerset win by 63 runs (DLS)
God, how I hate away T20 games on Friday evenings. If it's not the M5 that's clogged on the way there, it's the M3 or the M25, and the chances are that one them will be closed on the way back for re-surfacing or some such. This afternoon, it's the A303 which is the problem. After consulting various traffic apps, I decide to leave Langport at just after 3, to collect Mark Davis at Martock, with the aim of getting to the Ageas Bowl at around 6 for a 7 o'clock start. It is a journey that under normal circumstances would take about an hour and three quarters, so I'm allowing over an hour for contingencies. We reach our destination at 6.40, which means a mad dash through the Hilton Hotel lobbies and lifts to the commentary gantry on the third floor, where I find a maze of wires, one of which presumably will connect us to the studio in Bristol, but I haven't the foggiest idea which. We eventually make contact with about three minutes to spare.
Still, at least I've had Mark for company through all the traffic jams on the A303 and the M27 and have been able to catch up with the latest triumphs and tribulations of Wembdon CC, the up and coming (so he insists) club on the outskirts of Bridgwater which he now coaches. Player discipline is a bit of problem, but show me a club where it isn't!
The Ageas Bowl on a stormy evening
By the time we get there, Tom Abell has lost the toss and Somerset have - predictably, with heavy showers forecast - been asked to bat. Half a gale is blowing across the ground from the South, adding yet another factor to the host of considerations the two captains will have to balance. The pitch looks like a typical Ageas Bowl offering - used, and probably a bit slow, suiting the pace-off bowlers. In their last game here, Hampshire made only 135 and still beat Glamorgan by 48 runs. Mark suggests that 160 would be a decent score.
But that is to reckon without the brilliance of Babar Azam, and the intelligence of Tom Abell. After Somerset lose Banton and Hildreth in the powerplay, the pair of them put together a partnership which is almost a carbon copy of the one against Essex, two nights previously. Hardly a ball is allowed to pass without a run being scored, and just about every bad ball (and quite a few good ones too) is dispatched for a boundary, Babar mixing power with finesse, Abell driving powerfully through, and over, the off-side. This is proper batting, but super-charged.
From 41/2 at the end of the six over powerplay, Somerset reach the halfway stage at 80/2, poised for lift-off. At around this stage of the innings, a sharp shower sends the players scurrying from the field. Having not had time for anything to eat before the start of play I decide to head down to the media centre on the floor below in search of sustenance, using the stairs, rather than waiting ages for a lift. But when I come to open the door out of the stairwell, it is locked. A hotel resident would have a card to open it, but I don't. I'm trapped, and I'll bet the players are even now coming back out. Fortunately, I have my phone with me, and Mark answers my call for help. I reach the broadcasting point with about ten seconds to spare.
All such mishaps are forgotten though as Babar and Abell warm to their work. When Abell belts Dawson through the off-side for four, he reaches his 50 - his first in T20 cricket - from just 30 balls. And even when he is out, off the last ball of the 16th, there is no loss of momentum as first Eddie Byrom and then Tom Lammonby maintain the tempo, whilst giving Babar as much of the strike as they can. At the start of the final over, Somerset are 188/4, Babar on 90, and he has the strike. After being left high and dry on 95* at Taunton, surely this time he'll take Hampshire for a century? A leg bye means loss of strike, but the pair then steal a single to the wicket-keeper, and Babar takes two off the third ball. So, three balls left, eight runs needed, for Babar's century and Somerset's 200. The next ball from Chris Wood (much the best of the Hampshire bowlers) is carved through the offside for four. Almost there. But then a dot! Can Babar hit the last ball for four? No he can't. He hits it for six! Quite magnificent, I almost shout on commentary. An innings of pure class. This man is something else!
With 202 on the board on this pitch, Somerset ought to be red-hot favourites. There's only one real concern, and that's the weather, We've already had two short breaks for showers, and worse is forecast for later. If Hampshire can get above the DLS par and stay there after five overs, they could yet steal the points. How cruel would that be?
Max Waller's opening over goes for just three - a great start. But in the second over, the dangerous Rillee Rossouw pulls Jerome Taylor for an emphatic four. Ominous. Off the fifth ball, Aneurin Donald calls Rossouw for a quick single. At mid-wicket, Tom Lammony has only a stump and a half to aim at. His throw plucks out the middle stump, clean as a whistle. T20 cricket at its most thrilling.
The wicket means a sharp jump in the DLS par score, and Hampshire panic in the face of it. Even as good a player as James Vince seems to have decided that slogging is the only way to go. In the third over, Tom Banton can't quite cling onto a nick down the leg-side, and Eddie Byrom spills a sitter at mid-on, Vince the beneficiary on both occasions, Craig Overton the luckless bowler. "You can't afford to drop Vince twice in an over" says Mark, stating the obvious. "That could cost us the match".
Happily, it doesn't. The Hampshire batsmen carry on slogging, Overton bowls better than ever, getting Vince and Donald in the same over, the latter quite brilliantly caught by Max Waller, sprinting as if his life depended on it away from the pitch, towards the Hotel, the ball, wind assisted, coming over his shoulders, flinging himself forward and somehow clutching the ball at full stretch inches from the turf. It is one of the best catches I've seen even Max take. It is almost as if the Somerset fielders are making up for those two earlier lapses by showing what they are really made of.
With the rain holding off and the DLS par out of sight, Hampshire seem resigned to defeat. Banton makes up for an earlier lapse by sprinting thirty yards to catch a skier to see off Chris Morris, and when Roelof van der Merwe dives to his left at deep square leg to catch a full-blooded pull from Sam Northeast that might otherwise have gone for six, the game is effectively won, the returning rain denying Somerset an even bigger victory. The bowlers have all played their part - the pick of them being Craig Overton putting in his best spell of the campaign so far, with 2/25 - the fielding has been mostly brilliant and the intent shown by the entire team deeply impressive.
When I interview Tom Abell afterwards, he's as happy as I've seen him since that wonderful day at Lord's, and rightly so, both for his own performance and that of his team. "Hampshire blown away by storm Somerset", I tweet when I get home, after a storm-tossed return trip.
Just one thing is bothering me. According to DLS, the result was a win for Somerset by 63 runs, the assumption presumably being that Hampshire would have reached 139 had they batted out their 20 overs. Which in turn assumes, given that they finished on 69/6 in 12.1 overs, that they would have scored another 70 runs in 7.5 overs, with only four wickets to play with. That doesn't somehow seem very likely.
Still it was a very good win. We go above Hampshire in the table, and our net run rate has been given a useful boost. News come through from the Oval that the Glosters have also won. A West Country showdown looms, but first we've got to see off the bogeymen from Kent!
August 9. Vitality Blast T20. Hampshire v Somerset
Somerset 202; Hampshire 69/6 12.1 overs. Somerset win by 63 runs (DLS)
God, how I hate away T20 games on Friday evenings. If it's not the M5 that's clogged on the way there, it's the M3 or the M25, and the chances are that one them will be closed on the way back for re-surfacing or some such. This afternoon, it's the A303 which is the problem. After consulting various traffic apps, I decide to leave Langport at just after 3, to collect Mark Davis at Martock, with the aim of getting to the Ageas Bowl at around 6 for a 7 o'clock start. It is a journey that under normal circumstances would take about an hour and three quarters, so I'm allowing over an hour for contingencies. We reach our destination at 6.40, which means a mad dash through the Hilton Hotel lobbies and lifts to the commentary gantry on the third floor, where I find a maze of wires, one of which presumably will connect us to the studio in Bristol, but I haven't the foggiest idea which. We eventually make contact with about three minutes to spare.
Still, at least I've had Mark for company through all the traffic jams on the A303 and the M27 and have been able to catch up with the latest triumphs and tribulations of Wembdon CC, the up and coming (so he insists) club on the outskirts of Bridgwater which he now coaches. Player discipline is a bit of problem, but show me a club where it isn't!
By the time we get there, Tom Abell has lost the toss and Somerset have - predictably, with heavy showers forecast - been asked to bat. Half a gale is blowing across the ground from the South, adding yet another factor to the host of considerations the two captains will have to balance. The pitch looks like a typical Ageas Bowl offering - used, and probably a bit slow, suiting the pace-off bowlers. In their last game here, Hampshire made only 135 and still beat Glamorgan by 48 runs. Mark suggests that 160 would be a decent score.
But that is to reckon without the brilliance of Babar Azam, and the intelligence of Tom Abell. After Somerset lose Banton and Hildreth in the powerplay, the pair of them put together a partnership which is almost a carbon copy of the one against Essex, two nights previously. Hardly a ball is allowed to pass without a run being scored, and just about every bad ball (and quite a few good ones too) is dispatched for a boundary, Babar mixing power with finesse, Abell driving powerfully through, and over, the off-side. This is proper batting, but super-charged.
From 41/2 at the end of the six over powerplay, Somerset reach the halfway stage at 80/2, poised for lift-off. At around this stage of the innings, a sharp shower sends the players scurrying from the field. Having not had time for anything to eat before the start of play I decide to head down to the media centre on the floor below in search of sustenance, using the stairs, rather than waiting ages for a lift. But when I come to open the door out of the stairwell, it is locked. A hotel resident would have a card to open it, but I don't. I'm trapped, and I'll bet the players are even now coming back out. Fortunately, I have my phone with me, and Mark answers my call for help. I reach the broadcasting point with about ten seconds to spare.
All such mishaps are forgotten though as Babar and Abell warm to their work. When Abell belts Dawson through the off-side for four, he reaches his 50 - his first in T20 cricket - from just 30 balls. And even when he is out, off the last ball of the 16th, there is no loss of momentum as first Eddie Byrom and then Tom Lammonby maintain the tempo, whilst giving Babar as much of the strike as they can. At the start of the final over, Somerset are 188/4, Babar on 90, and he has the strike. After being left high and dry on 95* at Taunton, surely this time he'll take Hampshire for a century? A leg bye means loss of strike, but the pair then steal a single to the wicket-keeper, and Babar takes two off the third ball. So, three balls left, eight runs needed, for Babar's century and Somerset's 200. The next ball from Chris Wood (much the best of the Hampshire bowlers) is carved through the offside for four. Almost there. But then a dot! Can Babar hit the last ball for four? No he can't. He hits it for six! Quite magnificent, I almost shout on commentary. An innings of pure class. This man is something else!
With 202 on the board on this pitch, Somerset ought to be red-hot favourites. There's only one real concern, and that's the weather, We've already had two short breaks for showers, and worse is forecast for later. If Hampshire can get above the DLS par and stay there after five overs, they could yet steal the points. How cruel would that be?
Max Waller's opening over goes for just three - a great start. But in the second over, the dangerous Rillee Rossouw pulls Jerome Taylor for an emphatic four. Ominous. Off the fifth ball, Aneurin Donald calls Rossouw for a quick single. At mid-wicket, Tom Lammony has only a stump and a half to aim at. His throw plucks out the middle stump, clean as a whistle. T20 cricket at its most thrilling.
The wicket means a sharp jump in the DLS par score, and Hampshire panic in the face of it. Even as good a player as James Vince seems to have decided that slogging is the only way to go. In the third over, Tom Banton can't quite cling onto a nick down the leg-side, and Eddie Byrom spills a sitter at mid-on, Vince the beneficiary on both occasions, Craig Overton the luckless bowler. "You can't afford to drop Vince twice in an over" says Mark, stating the obvious. "That could cost us the match".
Happily, it doesn't. The Hampshire batsmen carry on slogging, Overton bowls better than ever, getting Vince and Donald in the same over, the latter quite brilliantly caught by Max Waller, sprinting as if his life depended on it away from the pitch, towards the Hotel, the ball, wind assisted, coming over his shoulders, flinging himself forward and somehow clutching the ball at full stretch inches from the turf. It is one of the best catches I've seen even Max take. It is almost as if the Somerset fielders are making up for those two earlier lapses by showing what they are really made of.
With the rain holding off and the DLS par out of sight, Hampshire seem resigned to defeat. Banton makes up for an earlier lapse by sprinting thirty yards to catch a skier to see off Chris Morris, and when Roelof van der Merwe dives to his left at deep square leg to catch a full-blooded pull from Sam Northeast that might otherwise have gone for six, the game is effectively won, the returning rain denying Somerset an even bigger victory. The bowlers have all played their part - the pick of them being Craig Overton putting in his best spell of the campaign so far, with 2/25 - the fielding has been mostly brilliant and the intent shown by the entire team deeply impressive.
When I interview Tom Abell afterwards, he's as happy as I've seen him since that wonderful day at Lord's, and rightly so, both for his own performance and that of his team. "Hampshire blown away by storm Somerset", I tweet when I get home, after a storm-tossed return trip.
Just one thing is bothering me. According to DLS, the result was a win for Somerset by 63 runs, the assumption presumably being that Hampshire would have reached 139 had they batted out their 20 overs. Which in turn assumes, given that they finished on 69/6 in 12.1 overs, that they would have scored another 70 runs in 7.5 overs, with only four wickets to play with. That doesn't somehow seem very likely.
Still it was a very good win. We go above Hampshire in the table, and our net run rate has been given a useful boost. News come through from the Oval that the Glosters have also won. A West Country showdown looms, but first we've got to see off the bogeymen from Kent!
nice
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