David Payne, unfortunate to hold just a single England cap, has been the standout bowler in this year’s T20 Blast and, together with fellow left-armer Matt Taylor, has shared 52 wickets for Gloucestershire. Sussex, who had scored 200 or higher six times in the group stages, were blown away in 18.1 overs as left-arm seamer Matt Taylor and left-arm spinner Tom Smith took three wickets each and David Payne raised his tally to 30 as the competition’s leading wicket-taker while conceding just nine runs in four overs.
David Payne moved clear as the leading wicket-taker in this year’s competition, while there were three for Tom Smith, whose T20 debut came in 2007, the same year that Mark Alleyne first guided Gloucestershire to the final
Matt Taylor and Tom Smith grabbed the lion’s share of the wickets with twin figures of 3 for 25, but David Payne’s 1 for 9 in four overs was the epitome of their performance. Gloucestershire made sure that the conditions would be academic come the sharp end, by routing their previously high-flying rivals for 106 in 18.1 overs.
Pitch and Toss
The pitch at the Edgbaston, Birmingham is a balanced pitch. The average 1st innings score at this venue in the last 20 matches is 256 runs. The team batting first at this venue has won 30% of its matches. The team winning the toss will look to bowl first here. Sussex skipper Tymal Mills won the toss and chose to bat first. Jack Taylor the Gloucestershire skipper seemed content with the decision to bowl first.
David Payne and Matt Taylor skittles Sussex for mere 106 runs .
David Payne’s harnessing of swing in the powerplay is his “super-strength”, as he told ESPNCricinfo in the build-up, and with metronomic inevitability he proved true to his word once again. His 21st powerplay wicket of the campaign, and tournament-leading 30th overall, was the whopper that Gloucestershire needed above all others.
With 595 runs at 42.50 going into Finals Day, Daniel Hughes had been the rock of Sussex’s batting all season long, but he’d extended his tally by just one more run when David Payne outfoxed him in his second over. With a hint of shape from over the wicket, he lured Hughes across his crease then beat his intentions with some extra bounce, the under-edge deflecting into his own stumps.
Five balls – and no runs – later, Sussex’s innings was officially in the soup. Matt Taylor’s low full toss wasn’t quite the yorker he was aiming for, but then nor was Harrison Ward’s leading-edged response. Hammond snaffled the low deflection that somehow carried to mid-on, and though James Coles then cracked three of Taylor’s next four balls for four, he too fell to the fifth, as Bancroft intercepted at short midwicket.
Taylor’s third and final wicket, however, was a true collector’s item. Round the wicket, perfect line and length, it gripped the dry pitch and ripped and bounced like a legbreak through Tom Alsop’s half-formed defenses. His hat-trick ball was too full to trouble John Simpson – “you greedy boy!” joked James Bracey over the stump mic, but at 35 for 4 at the end of the powerplay, Sussex were scrambling for anything competitive.
Ollie Price’s first two balls weren’t the most auspicious. Five wides first-up, then four more byes as a very tight appeal for lbw deceived both batter and keeper. His third ball, however, was bang on the money. Round the wicket to the left-handed Tom Clark, and straightening just enough out of the foot holes to peg back his off stump as Clark missed his sweep.
And, after a solitary over for his brother Tom, Ollie made it two wickets in as many overs as Fynn Hudson-Prentice, one ball after finding the stands at deep midwicket, found the fielder there instead, as he got too greedy on a dragged-down delivery, and picked out Hammond’s safe hands once more to depart for a run-a-ball 13.
Five balls was enough for Tom Smith to prize out Sussex’s last realistic hope of a defendable total. Simpson also succumbed to the sweep as he was nailed on the full, just in line with off stump, leaving Sussex beached on 64 for 7 in the tenth, with little option but to bat out the overs and take whatever they could muster.
Robinson and Jack Carson obliged for a time, adding a run-a-ball 37 to drag the total past 100. But back came Smith, tossing it above Robinson’s eyeline to lure a hack to deep mid-off. One ball later, he and Bracey combined for a moment that might have been designed as Jack Russell-Mark Alleyne tribute act, as Smith fired a faster delivery past the pads of the incoming Mills, and the unsighted Bracey whipped off the bails for a stumping that would have graced the club’s trophy-winning glory days at the turn of the 2000s.
With options aplenty and only the resolute Carson resisting, David Payne bowled out in the 18th over, conceding just nine runs in total in another stellar display, before Josh Shaw – scarcely any less frugal – mopped up the resistance with 11 balls left unused. It had been a performance to match their magnificent defence of 139 on his same ground in the quarter-final against Birmingham Bears. On this evidence, there was little reason to believe Gloucestershire couldn’t make it three Edgbaston wins in a row by the end of cricket’s longest day.
Sussex had backed their batting power as the toss fell their way, but suffered a calamitous start, losing their first four wickets for 27 in 5.3 overs.
Their troubles began when Daniel Hughes, the competition’s leading run-scorer, was bowled off a bottom edge by David Payne for just a single, worsened when Harrison Ward hit a Matt Taylor full toss straight to mid-off, and then doubled when the left-armer’s second over saw James Coles caught at short midwicket and Tom Alsop bowled through the gate from consecutive deliveries.
New batter John Simpson put away two short balls for four but at 35 for four from six Sussex needed to gather their senses. Instead, they had lost three more before they’d reached the halfway point at 65 for seven. Tom Clark, sweeping, was bowled by off-spinner Ollie Price, who picked up a second when Fynn Hudson-Prentice hauled six over deep midwicket but was caught there next ball. John Simpson departed leg before to the left-arm spin of Tom Smith, also missing the sweep.
Sussex at least negotiated the next five overs without losing a wicket, but any sense of achievement soon evaporated as Smith became the third bowler of the day to take two in two, Ollie Robinson heaving a slower delivery to long off after adding 38 with Jack Carson before a razor-sharp James Bracey gathered a leg-side wide to stump Tymal Mills. Shaw and David Payne conceded just four between them from overs 18 and 19 before Carson’s failed attempt to clear deep midwicket gave Miles Hammond his fourth catch of the innings.
James Bracey 49 runs completes easy win for Gloucestershire by 8 wickets
Needing only 5.35 per over, Gloucestershire came out of the powerplay well on track at 41 for one. They had ridden their luck a little with airborne shots that just evaded fielders but their only casualty was Miles Hammond, who sliced to deep backward point.
Bracey pulled Tymal Mills for the first of his sixes and though they lost Bancroft at the start of the 11th over when he skewed a drive off left-arm spinner James Coles to be well taken at mid-on, by that point just 36 runs were needed. That came down to 15 following an expensive over in which Mills conceded a second pulled six and a driven four by Bracey before a one-sided contest.
In a moment that summed up Sussex’s afternoon, Robinson spilled an absolute dolly to give Bracey a life two balls before he lofted Carson over the long-off boundary to win the match.
The result was never truly in doubt. Despite the early loss of Miles Hammond, Cameron Bancroft and James Bracey broke the back of the chase with a second-wicket stand of 54, and Sussex’s grim day was summed up when Ollie Robinson dropped an utter sitter at mid-on, as Bracey went for broke with just six runs needed. He got it right two balls later, however, with a mighty drill over long-off to wrap up the chase with 38 balls unused.
Sussex hadn’t had a prayer with so few runs to play with. Tymal Mills, doubtless ruing his call at the toss, tried to frontload his strike bowling, with Robinson relatively misery but wicketless in his four overs for 23, while the only other successful bowler was James Coles, whose 1 for 17 in three overs will count as further experience banked at the end of a breakthrough campaign.
Presentations and Road Ahead
Sussex losing skipper Tymal Mills said : “After how well we’ve played in the group stages, that was one of our poorest performances of the season and to do that on finals day is very disappointing.
“But we’ve made huge improvements on where we have been in the last few years so credit to all the backroom staff and all the players for the hard work put in over the last 12 months. My message in the dressing room is to build on this and come back stronger next year.
“Farbs (Paul Farbrace) has given me a lot of freedom as captain to make the team how I want to make it. I’ve tried to lead by example. My main goal was to get the club and the boys to take T20 more seriously and we certainly do that now and hopefully we’ll be back here again.”
Gloucestershire winning skipper Jack Taylor said : “We wanted to have a bat, having had success here in the quarter-final here when we batted first, but when you bowl and field as we did to keep them to 105 you always feel you should win the game. It’s another thing going out and doing it, so doing it so clinically was really nice.
“And what an occasion to be playing Somerset. We’ve had some success against them this season but that won’t count for much. It’s all about who plays better this evening and hopefully that can be us.
“It helps to have had recent experience playing in these surroundings in the quarter-final because we don’t play here that often. We’ve got some momentum, which is something we speak about a lot in sport, about peaking at the right time. We’ve won four in a row now – why can’t we make it a fifth.”
David Payne Vitality Player of the Match for his 1 for 9 from four overs said : “As a pack, we’ve all been pretty on it this year. We joked about it before the day that how good it would be to have a West County derby. Part one and two has gone alright. Now let’s see…”
Gloucestershire booked themselves a West Country showdown with local rivals Somerset in the Vitality Blast final, to give themselves a shot at their first silverware for close to a decade, as well as their maiden title in this competition, after a crushingly effective eight-wicket victory over Sussex in the second semi-final at Edgbaston.
After being asked to bowl first on a drying pitch that was likely to offer increasing grip for the spinners – and having watched Somerset’s bowlers put the squeeze on Surrey in the opening contest – Gloucestershire made sure that the conditions would be academic come the sharp end, by routing their previously high-flying rivals for 106 in 18.1 overs. Matt Taylor and Tom Smith grabbed the lion’s share of the wickets with twin figures of 3 for 25, but David Payne’s 1 for 9 in four overs was the epitome of their performance.
After that, the result was never truly in doubt. Despite the early loss of Miles Hammond, Cameron Bancroft and James Bracey broke the back of the chase with a second-wicket stand of 54, and Sussex’s grim day was summed up when Ollie Robinson dropped an utter sitter at mid-on, as Bracey went for broke with just six runs needed. He got it right two balls later, however, with a mighty drill over long-off to wrap up the chase with 38 balls unused.
Sussex hadn’t had a prayer with so few runs to play with. Tymal Mills, doubtless ruing his call at the toss, tried to frontload his strike bowling, with Robinson relatively misery but wicketless in his four overs for 23, while the only other successful bowler was James Coles, whose 1 for 17 in three overs will count as further experience banked at the end of a breakthrough campaign.