T20 Blast

Great credit has to go to Abell, who again showed his maturity, at 34-5 & the required rate at 10, there was no panic. Green & the lower order cleared the ropes in the closing overs as the Hampshire bowlers lost the plot.

Kent have posted 168, with a classy 82 from Bell-Drummond, finished off by Stevens 47 not out which contained 7 fours. Garton impressed with the ball, & Mills bowled his usual mixture of pace & slower balls, but blew hot & cold. difficult to say if the pitch has improved slightly for batting, as both sides lost early wickets in the first Semi, whereas, Bell Drummond batted through to the 17th over. This is not a straightforward wicket to bat on, so anything around 160 should be defendable.

Kent beat Sussex By 21 runs. A solid all round bowling & fielding performance from Kent. The only innings of substance come from Garton, with 41. The required rate was approaching 12, & any hope Sussex had, faded with his dismissal, as they were bowled out with 5 balls remaining.

I'll state the obvious & say that Kent will start as favourites in the Final. They topped the South Group, but both teams have slightly different personnel now with overseas players unavailable. It only takes one batsman to come off, which still gives Somerset a real chance.

Kent beat Somerset by 25 runs, after being put into bat, Kent posted 167-7 with Player Of The Match Jordan Cox making 58 from 28 balls. Kent got off to the worst possible start, with Denly (3-31) taking the wicket of Banton from the 2nd ball of the innings. Pace off the ball was the way to go, & the bowlers were backed up by fantastic fielding.

New season, with the live match on Sky, a re-match of last years final, as Kent host Somerset.

^^ Somerset won by 8 wickets, & Yorkshire beat, Worcestershire by 7 wickets, captained by Root & a match winning knock by Brook, with an unbeaten 60 from 27 balls. It's unclear as to how many matches the pair will play, with the 1st Test a week away. Yorkshire's captain Willey is unavailable due to IPL commitments. The constant toing & froing of players, either on International duty or IPL, goes some way to explaining why Yorkshire have never won this comp, now in it's 20th year. On that subject, this could be the as we see of the Blast, early reports are ticket sales are down, with most of the backing being for The Hundred, which has undercut The Blast offering much cheaper tickets. At some point in the future they will have evidence to prove that the Blast is no longer a success, but have manipulated the situation to achieve this. The crammed fixtures have further undermined the Blast, in a 14 game group stage, Yorkshire have 6 of their 7 home matches all in a 2 week period, no surprise that they had around 6,000 turn out last night, less than a third of the grounds capacity.

Live on Sky tonight, coverage from 18.15 Roses match from Old Trafford.

^^ Great game which resulted in a tie, with Lancashire taking the wicket of Brook with the final ball of the match. That's the 3rd tie between these sides.

Will Smeed looks excellent for us at the moment hes got even more powerful over the winter, would be amazed if England dont call him up this summer, hes i think the best T20 opener in the country at the moment,
loved the way he paced last Fridays innings he just got faster and faster as got used to the blowing,
on another note the county ground at taunton is now officially the fastest scoring T20 ground in the world,