NatWest T20 Blast

Gets underway tomorrow.

Who are your picks for the tournament?
Batsmen to watch?
Bowler?

Have to admit I'm not hugely tuned into who has signed who etc for the T20, but I always fancy Kent to do well, and in particular DBD and Northeast to score runs.

Bowling wise - never bet against an Overton or a Curran

Gloucestershire and Middlesex ends in a tie!
182 each. Middlesex needed 11 off the last over and managed 10.

Northants vs Yorkshire a washout tonight

Hopefully the weather will be better for Elclassicoast tomorrow

Tamim Iqbal pulls out of his spell at Essex for 'personal reasons' - although if the rumours are true, then Britain needs to take a long hard look at itself. Horrific.

JDizzle wrote:Tamim Iqbal pulls out of his spell at Essex for 'personal reasons' - although if the rumours are true, then Britain needs to take a long hard look at itself. Horrific.

Sickening reports. Utterly sickening

First time I've seen George Garton bowl tonight (only seen his name in Lions squads before now) - and easy to see why England like him. Left armer (only turned 20 in April) and is clocking 90mph plus. Exciting prospect!

Crane train chuggling along nicely - lovely spell of 2-24 off his 4 overs including the two big wickets of Wright and Taylor

Very good win tonight for the Hampshire Boys. Vince with a great knock opening up. Crane continues to impress and Abbott bowled brilliantly.

Middlesex sneak a win vs Surrey. Looked comfortable and then a great spell from Batty gave Surrey a chance.

Gloucestershire beat Kent. Benny Howell 4fer - a really good t20 player!

Essex beat Somerset for their first win of the t20 blast. Tendo another useful innings with the bat.

Tonight's games:

Worcestershire vs Leicestershire
Warwickshire vs Northants
Lancs vs Yorkshire
Surrey vs Kent
Hampshire vs Middlesex

Roy and Finch bring up a 100 partnership in 8 overs, yet in 2017 the only people to see it are the 20,000 or so at The Oval.

That's where the T20 blast needs a rethink. The fact you can only ever see the game Sky are playing - it's not hard to just put a quick stream up on each clubs website!

Karl Brown 61 (47) - comms calling that a fine knock, but out in the 19th over having opened, is it? For me if an opener in T20 is still in come the 19th over, having faced nearly 50 balls themselves, should be above 80 at least. Brown just seemed happy to knock singles once the powerplay was over

Good Golly I'm Olly wrote:Karl Brown 61 (47) - comms calling that a fine knock, but out in the 19th over having opened, is it? For me if an opener in T20 is still in come the 19th over, having faced nearly 50 balls themselves, should be above 80 at least. Brown just seemed happy to knock singles once the powerplay was over

I'd agree. Batting that time and scoring at the equivalent of less than 8 an over on that deck is not a good knock. Especially with wickets in hand.

Good Golly I'm Olly wrote:Crane train chuggling along nicely - lovely spell of 2-24 off his 4 overs including the two big wickets of Wright and Taylor

Crane train in full flow, 3-15 off his 4 overs tonight

Glamorgan chase down Essex's 219 yesterday. Chopra and Ingram both making centuries in the game. Hell of a chase.
Warwickshire's poor season continues after they lose at home to Leicestershire.
Somerset beat Middlesex. Bit of a surprise result there.

Gloucestershire defend 138 against Kent last night. Very good in the field and adapted to the pitch well.

jimbohammers wrote:Gloucestershire defend 138 against Kent last night.  Very good in the field and adapted to the pitch well.  

If I didn't drop out of phone signal in my hotel I was going to post halfway through the match how poor Gloucester's score and batting intent was - good job I didn't

See from cricinfo that Benny Howell had another good game last night. Think he's one you've flagged, Olly. Surrey were said to be keen on him a couple of years or so ago but nothing came of it - he seems well suited to this format.

Kevin Pieterson, Aaron Finch, Jason Roy, Kumar Sangakkara, Mohammed Amir...all playing T20 blast tonight...only people seeing it are those at the ground...disgraceful when even the county championship gets online streams up now...

After starting with 3 straight wins, we've come back down to earth with 2 heavy losses.

Surrey looking good. Seem to have all bases covered. Roy, Finch, KP, Sanga and then the curran brothers. Ridiculous team really.

Wessels with a 100 last night for Notts.

Agree jimbob that the Surrey side looks well equipped for T20. I still think there's one tweak needed: Foskes for Sibley. This XI when firing would be pretty hard to match:

Roy
Finch
KP
Sanga
Pope
Foakes (wet)
S Curran
T Curran
Batty
Marker
Dernbach

The one key weakness is a big hitter at 6-9 if the early order have dragged their heels a bit. But with that top 4 I guess that's unlikely. Probably the strongest Surrey T20 side since the one that won the competition in the first year of domestic T20. And nice to see our best XI include 7 who learned their trade at the Oval.

(Apologies all for the persistent auto (in)correct in the post above)

Notts win against northants because of duckworth lewis. Harsh on Northants who posted 195. Only 5 covers possible in the Notts innings makes it a bit of a farce

jimbohammers wrote:Notts win against northants because of duckworth lewis. Harsh on Northants who posted 195. Only 5 covers possible in the Notts innings makes it a bit of a farce

Agreed - difficult to think what would be a fair 5 over target!

Ross Whiteley hit 6 sixes in an over

Yet there is literallly better footage online of Gary Sobers achieving the same feat back in 1968.

It's 2017.

Some games on tonight :

Leicestershire vs Warks
Durham vs Notts
Derbyshire vs Lancashire
Gloucestershire vs Glamorgan

Is there a worse commentator than Trescothick?
Called Rudolphs 50 off 44 balls an 'exceptional knock'

jimbohammers wrote:Is there a worse commentator than Trescothick?  
Called Rudolphs 50 off 44 balls an 'exceptional knock'

He's hampered by the fact he still plays imo - doesn't want to call a spade a spade for fear of offending someone.

Probably right Olly. Not really sure what he adds tbh!

Warwickshire beat Leicestershire - Jeetan Patel the man again, what a signing he has been for them over the years.

Derbyshire beat Lancs - shock result, Butler out for 1.

Notts smash Durham - Notts looking good, like Surrey they seem to have all bases covered in this format. Bad times for Durham

Glamorgan beat Gloucestershire - 50 for Miller on his Glamorgan debut.

I see Hampshire have adopted the policy of 'dropping' our 2 in form players (and youth players) for old overseas players who are out of form. Sigh

Why on earth have they done that jimbo? Alsop and Crane have probably been your two best players in the t20 so far!

I wish I knew the answer Olly. Side filled with Kolpak players + overseas. I sort of understand Crane not playing tonight at Taunton with the small boundaries but Alsop not in the side?! What?!
After 3 straight wins we follow up with 3 straight losses

Durham pick up their first win in a 7 over match vs Leicestershire. Chasing down 88. Ronchi earlier got 50 from 16 balls.

Hampshire stop the rot of 3 straight losses with a win at Gloucestershire. Despite a Klinger 100! Crane continues his good form with 2-17

Joe Clarke cracks 124* off 53 as Worcs chase down 201 with 11 balls to spare vs Durham! Can't wait to watch the one camera highlights of that on YouTube later.

He's been a revelation opening in the T20's, while Ross Whiteley has been doing standard Ross Whiteley things.

Just a shame the bowling attack isn't up to much.

In a game where Worcester were 89-2 off 6.2 overs, Mitchell Santner for some bizarre reason came in at 4 and played an atrocious innings of 12 off 20 balls ahead of Ross Whiteley...he could barely hit it off the square!

Another win for Sussex, another excellent display by Chris Nash

I notice no comments about Notts yesterday - set 184, they chased down in under 14 overs. Hales out for 95 off 30 balls - that's pretty much Chris Gayle (and no-one else) territory

That is incredible batting, Dummy. I really rate Hales. Notts have a very good side.

South Group is ridiculously close.

Sussex needed 10 to win off 2 overs last night and lost....

Hampshire smashed top of the table Glamorgan, thanks to spinners Crane and Dawson + a classy 50 from the skipper Vince.

So many teams are still in the hunt for the top 4 places

jimbohammers wrote:That is incredible batting, Dummy. I really rate Hales. Notts have a very good side.

South Group is ridiculously close.

Sussex needed 10 to win off 2 overs last night and lost....

Hampshire smashed top of the table Glamorgan, thanks to spinners Crane and Dawson + a classy 50 from the skipper Vince.

So many teams are still in the hunt for the top 4 places

Understandably it's often the batsmen who take the limelight in t20s but that was incredibly effective bowling by Southee and especially young Helm to snatch victory for Middlesex last night.

Carnage at Headingley. 68/0 after five overs.

Duty281 wrote:Carnage at Headingley. 68/0 after five overs.

Lancashire pulled it back well and kept Yorkshire to just over 180, but were undone by Bresnan taking 6-19 to lose by about 20

Blooming heck the blast has been mentally close this year

Quarter finals to be played Tuesday to Friday next week in this order (home team first)

Derbyshire vs Hampshire
Glamorgan vs Leicestershire
Notts vs Somerset
Surrey vs Birmingham

Tasty

Your lads are going alright here Jimbo!

It's a massacre

Good Golly I'm Olly wrote:It's a massacre

Not half! Hants lost 5 wickets in their final 2 overs but still added 26 runs!

With so many runs to play with, the cranetrain can go as it wants and needn't have any worries about coming off the rails!

Excellent win for Jimbo and his boys built around Afridi's quick fire ton plus useful contributions from the usual suspects including young Crane.

Not bad Olly
8th highest t20 of all time...

Nice of Afridi to show up tonight. Contributions all round the team though. Vince played well with Afridi . Good stuff from Dawson with the ball too.

Cheers Guildford, hopefully see Surrey there with us on finals day

It was an exceptional innings by Afridi. His batting has been a bonus if it comes off for years now. His bowling is what any astute coach wants him for. Although he obviously appeals to advertisement too.

In T20 cricket he has taken 271 wickets at 22.52 apiece with an economy of 6.5 runs per over. That is outstanding by any measure but especially so for a leggy who often bowls during difficult overs.

This summer for Hants he has bowled 40 overs in 11 games for 12 wickets at 24.58 and an economy of 7.38 runs per over. Not quite up to his usual standards but still very good. Impressively Mason Crane has outshone him though.