Glamorgan defeated Middlesex in emphatic style by five wickets, and with 27 balls to spare, at Merchant Taylors’ School in their opening contest in the Vitality Blast T20 with a dominant performance in the field, augmented by some mature and assertive batting by Dan Douthwaite and Asa Tribe. (writes Andrew Hignell)
They say that fielding is a barometer of a team’s spirit and self-belied – something which Glamorgan proved in spadeloads on their first competitive T20 outing of the season which followed three successive victories inside three days in Championship cricket.
After Middlesex opted to bat first, a vibrant bowling performance supplemented by some outstanding fielding saw the visitors halt the home side’s progress as they tried to accelerate after being kept in check by some accurate bowling during the powerplay overs by Timm van der Gugten, Dan Douthwaite and Hayden Kerr, with the latter setting the tone with a spectacular run out of Kane Williamson, Middlesex’s gun batter, with the Australian at backward point uprooting the single stump at which he had to aim at the bowler’s end, with the Kiwi well short of his ground as he attempted a sharp single.
Mason Crane was also the bowler to benefit claiming 4/28 in two shrewd spells of canny leg-spin. The first saw Stevie Eskinazi, the Middlesex captain pull him to deep mid-wicket where Will Smale completed a good diving catch as he ran in from the boundary’s edge. Asa Tribe held onto two smart catches at long-on and long-off, whilst Jack Davies also perished as he reverse-swept Ben Kellaway straight into Kerr’s hands at backward square-leg. As the Middlesex innings lost momentum, van der Gugten and Kiran Carlson held onto skiers at mid-off whilst Chris Cooke dived high to his right to grab an outside edge as Josh de Caires flayed at van der Gugten.
Middlesex’s total looked well under-par, but for a while during the first ten overs of the Glamorgan innings, the home bowlers kept their team in the hunt and exploited some of the variable bounce in the pitch. At 64-5 in the tenth over, Tribe and Douthwaite joined forces but in the course of the next 38 balls, they doubled the score besides dealing solely in one’s and sixes to see Glamorgan home with 4.3 overs to spare.
Both batters struck a brace of huge sixes, with Tribe showing great composure and maturity on his T20 debut for the county. In between punishing the bad ball, the Jersey international drilled a trio of straight sixes, but it was his partner who struck the day’s biggest hit as he hoisted Tom Helm, who had earlier claimed three early wickets, high over deep square-leg, with the ball ending some 100 metres beyond the boundary rope and onto one of the junior pitches at the famous public school.
Next ball, Douthwaite settled the contest by swatting another mighty six, high over long-on and nearly into the rows of parked cars belonging to the two-hundred or so spectators who had driven to watch the double-header and take part in the Family Fun Day which Middlesex had organised at their Hertfordshire outpost.