Patel powers Notts to victory
All-rounder hits unbeaten 64 as Bears are tamed He and Taylor set record 132-run Finals partnership
Nottinghamshire Outlaws won the T20 final by beating Birmingham Bears by 22 runs after smashing 190-4. With Notts having already won the 50-over competition and leading the county championship second division, their revival under the former England head coach Peter Moores is almost complete.
Notts had earlier beaten Hampshire by 23 runs in the second semi-final, while Birmingham Bears qualified by beating Glamorgan by 11 runs before running out of steam on their home ground in front of a crowd of 24,000.
Harry Gurney, who took four for 17 against the Bears, gave credit to the fourth-wicket stand of 132 between Brendan Taylor and Samit Patel, a Finals day record. “That partnership between Samit and Brendan was ridiculous,” Gurney said after Notts hit 23 off the last over by Olly Stone, gaining a momentum which they never looked like losing.
Patel’s unbeaten 64, together with his left-arm spin bowling and a run-out with a direct hit, earned him the man of the match title. His captain, Dan Christian, said: “Having that really high score meant [the Bears] had to go pretty hard all the way through.”
Patel said: “I kind of thrive off it. I enjoy it. That is what you play cricket for, to win trophies.”
One of the unfulfilled talents of English cricket was the star of T20 finals day. Nottinghamshire were steered to the 20-over title, to go with the 50-over Royal London One Day Cup that they won earlier this season, by Samit Patel, 32, who could have played a whole lot more than six Tests, such is England’s paucity of spin-bowling all-rounders.
Patel’s name would hardly feature among the great all-rounders through the ages, but no Ian Botham or Andrew Flintoff could have done more on English domestic cricket’s big day. Patel scored 35 in the semi-final defeat of Hampshire, and an unbeaten 64 off only 42 balls in the final when Notts beat Birmingham Bears, alias Warwickshire, by 22 runs. He also dismissed Shahid Afridi first ball, albeit to the rankest of long-hops, and brought off two run-outs with direct hits of which Botham and Flintoff would have been pleased.
The situation confronting Patel in the final was fairly critical because Notts had been reduced to 30 for three by the Bears, specifically by Chris Woakes. Back to full rhythm after a disappointing Headingley Test, Woakes brought a ball back to hit the off stump of Alex Hales – whose modest finals day, with scores of 15 and seven, did not suggest he is knocking again on England’s Test door – and also dismissed Riki Wessels and Tom Moores, son of the county’s head coach Peter Moores, who has revitalised the club.
Patel joined with Brendan Taylor in assembling the highest partnership seen on a T20 finals day, a peculiarly English institution which started in 2003 and still brims with songs and bonhomie. Taylor is a rather unfulfilled Test talent too, as he gave up the unequal fight of representing Zimbabwe to join Notts full-time.
Together they added 132 in sufficiently quick time for their captain Dan Christian to club 28 off eight balls, and in taking 23 off the last over of their innings they deflated the Bears.
The sheer variety of the Notts attack was too much for the Bears, as it had earlier been for Hampshire. They could afford to thank Stuart Broad for his services and decline them, preferring the angle and back-of-the-hand slower balls of Harry Gurney and the variety of Jake Ball. In addition to Patel’s spin, they had the leg-breaks of Ish Sodhi and Steve Mullaney whose changes of pace and cutters made the most of a wearing pitch.
In the semi-final Patel ran out Michael Carberry, in the final it was Ed Pollock, the left-handed opener who had launched the Bears towards the final by hitting 50 off only 27 balls against Glamorgan with four sixes, while none of his team-mates could hit one. Pollock, celebrating a 2:1 in Economics at Durham, had calculated that his best way into county cricket was through T20, and he made murderous swishes to leg before Glamor- gan realised that taking pace off the ball was the way to go – and then their off-spinner Andrew Salter was given a single over.
Considering they needed 26 off the last over with a single wicket left, Glamorgan did well to get so close. In so doing they showed that the gap in T20 is not wide between the prosperous counties with Test grounds and those in the second division of the championship who have prioritised T20, like the winners Northamptonshire last year, and Derbyshire and Leicestershire – losing quarter-finalists – this year. Salter thumped Woakes for four, four, six, then an almighty skyer: had the two converging fielders collided and pushed the ball over the line, Glamorgan would have needed only six off the last two balls.
Last year it was Ben Duckett of Northamptonshire who used Finals Day to advance his cause, and he was picked by England for the tours of Bangladesh and India. Since then another T20 franchise circuit has been added to the schedule – South Africa’s Global T20 – in addition to the ones in Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and West Indies. The job prospects of 20-year-olds in England who can hit balls out of the ground, and perhaps bowl as well, are very bright.
Several of Warwickshire’s youngsters, in addition to Pollock, advertised their T20 skills: Sam Hain, who sustained their run-chase in the final with his 72 off 44 balls and much fine driving; the all-rounder Aaron Thomason; and Olly Stone, although he marred his earlier performance – he had bowled 90 mph straight and full – by trying too many slower balls. Hampshire’s legspinner Mason Crane is as yet no batsman, which reduces his chances of joining the list of English T20 cricketers playing for franchises, like the Luke Wrights and Chris Jordans
In the second semi-final, Hampshire possessed the best trio of spinners in Crane, Afridi and Liam Dawson. Together they bowled 12 overs and took four wickets for 80. Hampshire’s pace bowlers were not so effective – Christian smote Kyle Abbott for three sixes in one over – so that the Notts total of 169 was at least par on the ageing pitch.
Crane bowled his four overs straight through, with well-ripped leg-breaks and googlies for variation. Crane’s variability of length is a white-ball asset but it would not be if he makes his Test debut in England’s third Test against West Indies on Thursday.
“We lost too many wickets in that middle period,” said Hampshire’s captain James Vince, after his 56 off 32 balls proved in vain, before adding he would soon be off to South Africa’s new Global T20 and “hopefully the Big Bash.” Thus the franchise circuit expands and times speedily change.