3. Ball three: a shoutout for Howell
Sonny Baker, the Hampshire and England bowler, looks much like he did when I saw him at the start of his breakout season: sharp but not entirely sure where the ball is going. His first over in the semi-final produced three wides, and the key wicket of Ravi Bopara followed in his second. One advantage of that unpredictability is that, if the bowler doesn’t know where the ball is going, how can the batter?
His teammate Benny Howell has been one of my favourite cricketers to watch over the last decade or so. Many bowlers deliver six different balls in an over because they don’t know what they are doing, but Howell does it because he knows exactly what he’s doing. Aided by a spectacular catch in the deep by Ali Orr, he struck with the wicket of Saif Zaib in his first over.
No 8 is always a crucial spot in the order, so is it fair to have a man with 10 career tons and 53 half-centuries lurking down there? Northamptonshire fans will say yes, as Luke Procter played a fine hand advancing the score from 86 for six to 156 for seven in the company of the impressive Justin Broad.
Hampshire will feel that they let the game get away from them after the rain break, but they would still fancy their chances with a target reduced from 159 to 155 by Duckworth-Lewis-Stern in a match reduced by two overs per side. Nobody knows why.
4. Lynn’s win
It was pleasing, if a little curious and ultimately spectacular, to watch Lloyd Pope bowling to Chris Lynn in an all-Australian duel. Pleasing because Pope is a leg-spinner who flights and turns the ball, with Lynn a destructive batter; curious because Cricket Australia denied Marcus Harris and Ashton Turner their chance to play in the early semi-final; and the spectacle came later.
In a day of sensational catches, none was better than George Scrimshaw’s running, over-the-shoulder pouch of Ben Mayes. In my 50 years of watching cricket, no element of the game has improved as much as the third skill. The best 10% of 1970s fielders are as good as the worst 10% of the 2020s. Practice makes (almost) perfect.
You can’t catch them in the stands though. Lynn smashed 11 sixes, most of which went 10 rows or more back, in an extraordinary display of clean hitting that secured a final slot for his team and the first Finals Day ton for him. Pope was smashed for five in a row but was spared the “Broad to Yuvraj” treatment off the last ball of the over. You can’t play against that.
5. Fight for your right not to party
I wondered where I had last noticed the slight desperation that always clings to attempts to organise fun. Throughout the day at Edgbaston there was no minute left unfilled, no one in the audience left unencouraged, no sign left unflashing, no relenting in the exhortations to make the crowd “sing!” in the karaoke session. And all at a volume that does to eardrums what Lynn’s bat did to Pope’s deliveries. Then I recalled my long-buried memories of mid-1970s holiday camps in Prestatyn or Pwllheli. And a shiver ran down my spine.
Speaking of karaoke favourites, the old slogan for the Now That’s What I Call Music albums came to mind while watching Hampshire in the powerplay: “It’s just hit after hit after hit.” Rather like those old stalwarts of Woolworths, the question of whether it’s too much of a good thing does raise its head. Like power ballads, power hitting can pale after a while.
Though Hampshire’s innings in the final fell away a little after Toby Albert and James Vince’s stand of 97 off 59 balls, the Lewises (Gregory and Goldsworthy) the pick of the bowlers, a chase or 195 would be a Finals Day record.
6. Smeedy get your bat
There was an “anything you can do, I can do better” vibe to Will Smeed watching fellow 23-year-old opener Albert hit 85 before responding with 94 of his own. Buoyed up by the crowd, many of whom had started on the cider 12 hours earlier and were still in fine voice, Smeed found support in the form of quarter-final hero Sean Dickson, who hit a valedictory 33 in his last white-ball match for his county, and then his captain Gregory, who tonked 18 off five to seal the deal.
They never give their fans an easy ride but Somerset’s record of 14 wins from 17 matches shows they were the best team in the tournament. And another exciting, if a little overbearing, Finals Day shows the Blast is the best competition in domestic one-day cricket.
But, put your glasses down lads. It’s Hampshire again this morning in the Championship. How can something as fragile as cricket and as rare as victory be treated with such disdain by the suits?
This article is from The 99.94 Cricket Blog
