The Final Over of the Week in County Cricket – 10 June 2024

Lancashire and Sussex lead the way in the Blast

Early days yet, but both groups look tight and competitive from top to bottom

Ball One: Wells give Lancashire’s bowling plenty of depth

Lancashire may have won just one championship match all season, but four wins out of five in the Vitality Blast sees the Red Rose top the North Group.

Last week brought two solid victories, one chasing (vs Nottinghamshire) and one defending (vs Birmingham) and, in both cases Luke Wells played a key role.

After ten years at Sussex, he joined Lancashire in 2021 as an opening bat and that is probably still his day job, as his fine 66 off 32 balls in the Birmingham game attests. But he’s at least as valuable these days for his bowling, a skill that his adopted county has come to rely upon to stifle hitters in the middle overs. His 1-25 and 2-25, both off full allocations, last week gives him seven wickets in the tournament at just over a run a ball.

Can other batters who bowl just a little with the red ball, work on their secondary talent in order to bowl to a field and then use experience and nous to hurry through a spell without travelling (just three fours were hit in Wells’ eight overs)? With a sixth and even a seventh bowler vital to a fielding captain required to think quickly under pressure, Wells, and another old pro, Adam Lyth, at Yorkshire albeit with the red ball, are proving valuable assets indeed this season.  

Ball Two: Lyth slims down target to provide easy win

Speaking of the White Rose, they sit second in the group having played a match fewer, having knocked over Derbyshire in a textbook example of how to chase down a target of 180, one very much in the stiff, but achievable, bracket.

Lyth and Dawid Malan led from the front, the openers both the wrong side of 35 these days but with well over 500 T20 matches between them. Only two of the first 17 overs did not feature a boundary and the required rate was never allowed to reach double figures and, when Lyth was dismissed for 84 with 43 required, in walked… Joe Root.

Control in white ball cricket is usually talked about with reference to the fielding side, but it is just as desirable for the batting XI. Keep the scoreboard ticking over with one eye on Duckworth-Lewis-Stern and do not allow a bowler to settle, as you aim to reach the target with about ten balls in hand in case of the occasional mishap. Not every county will have four Test batters at the top of their order as Yorkshire do, but accumulating resources is one thing; using them is another. 

Ball Three: Saif makes it safe

Northamptonshire sit third in the table on net run rate with an identical record to that of the Tykes. 

Having set Worcestershire 170 at Wantage Road, the home side, led by David Willey in his second spell at the club, never allowed a partnership to blossom, continually taking wickets when needed.

It was another left-arm all-rounder who caught the eye, Saif Zaib catapulting Northants to 169-4 with a six overs stand of 79 runs with Sikander Raza, then picking up three of the top six for just 20 runs with his spin.

It represents a welcome bit of form in an inconsistent season for Zaib who is an exciting but high-risk cricketer, always looking to make things happen. If he clicks for the rest of the Blast, he and his captain will make a formidable combination with bat and ball.  

Ball Four: Big Basher proves a big noise for Sussex

Sussex picked up a couple of away wins to go top of the South Group ahead of last week’s first victims, Surrey, on net run rate. Both victories followed a similar pattern: bat first, make well over 200 and then squeeze the reply.

Australian, Daniel Hughes, proved the key man in setting what proved to be insurmountable targets, with a brace of 65s, the opener scoring both inside 13 overs to set a platform for the charge to 200. He has spent his career in domestic cricket and is in his mid-30s now but it shows the value of a worldwide scouting network and, possibly, an agreeable location for a summer’s work.

But never mind all that. In an increasingly frightening world, it’s something of a comfort for fans of a certain age to see the name “DP Hughes” on a scorecard with a few sixes hit to boot.  

Ball Five: like old-school Radio One, the hits keep coming

Somerset joined the logjam behind Sussex and Surrey on four points after taking Hampshire’s experienced attack for 241-5, a total that was to prove well beyond James Vince’s chasers.

It’s no surprise that the home side can score runs at Taunton, a fast-scoring ground with fierce local support and with the talents of Tom Banton, Will Smeed and Tom Kohler-Cadmore available to tee-off in the powerplay. It does raise an eyebrow to find that the key partnership, 144 in 11.2 overs, was between Tom Abell and Sean Dickson, good batters both, but neither with a reputation for launching it over the pickets on a regular basis.

That makes me think of a comment my father made years ago when a golfer was described by Peter Alliss as “a good bunker player”. “Who isn’t?” he remarked, with empirical evidence to back up the claim. Such is the practice that goes into range hitting allied to all-year round fitness regimes, that most players these days, once their eyes are in, find boundary-hitting super-easy, barely an inconvenience. 

Truth is, I rather wish it weren’t.     

Ball Six: Crane’s heavy lifting comes to nothing.

Two of the other five teams locked on two wins from four played out a topsy-turvy match at another tight ground whose crowd can lift its players, Essex rescuing a win from the jaws of defeat at home to Glamorgan.

After Mason Crane’s four wickets had continued his splendid Blast season, the visitors looked home and hosed, Essex needing 44 with just two wickets in hand. Time was on their side with a run-a-ball sufficient to meet the target.

Also on their side was Luc Benkenstein, still a teenager and more a bowler who bats than a genuine all-rounder, but steeped in the game through his father, Dale’s, 30+ years as a coach and player. At the other end, lurking at number 10, was Shane Snater, the Dutch international a canny late order batter who was made for an equation like that. 

They ticked over largely in singles waiting for the one big over. As it happened, it was two halves of two overs as they hit five boundaries off the seven balls that straddled the 16th and 17th overs – plain sailing from there.

 

Essex had lost six wickets for 16 runs in three overs of middle-order mayhem, but a cool head or two down the order was all they needed.