T20 Blast 2019, Day 1: Round-up

AB de Villiers lit up the T20 Blast right on the first day and it never seemed as if he was out of the game. He seemed to be in the finest of touches and blew the opposition away with a whirlwind knock. All the three games that were played in the tournament on the first day were quite high-scoring yet one-sided.

Middlesex and Somerset made the early inroads from the South Division while Worcestershire from the North Division registered an impressive win. Moeen Ali brought up a fine performance for his team both with the bat as well as the ball. Tom Banton and David Lloyd were two of the other impressive performers on the day.

Here is how things progressed on the day:

Middlesex vs Essex – South Group

After being put in to bat first, Essex lost two of their star performers quite early. Openers Varun Chopra and Cameron Delport were dismissed for single-digit scores by Tom Helm. But Ryan ten Doeschate came to the rescue with an unbeaten and lightning-fast half-century. While he mustered 74 runs, Tom Westley got to 40. This pushed Essex to 164/6 in 20 overs.

While this was a defendable target, Dawid Malan and AB de Villiers had other thoughts. The former scored 43 runs off 34 balls. He was out there in the middle right till the end and got out when his team was in a touching distance from a victory. The phenomenon called AB de Villiers, though, was the one who did the bulk of the job. He remained unbeaten on 88 off 43 balls in an innings that included 6 sixes and 5 fours. Thus, the team chased the target down with 3 overs to spare.

Brief Scores:

ESS: 164/6 in 20 overs (Ryan ten Doeschate 74*, Tom Westley 40, Tom Helm 3/27)

MDX: 166/3 in 17 overs (AB de Villiers 88*, Dawid Malan 43, Matthew Quinn 1/20)

Result: Middlesex won by 7 wickets.

Nottinghamshire vs Worcestershire – North Group

This encounter between these two teams was as one-sided as it gets. Moeen Ali fired on all cylinders and had enough support from his teammates. Openers Riki Wessels and Martin Guptill got to their 20s and provided the team with decent starts. While Moeen Ali got 32 runs, Ed Barnard was excellent towards the end with a 19-ball 42 which helped Worcestershire get to 161/6.

There weren’t many notable performances from the Notts’ batsmen expect a 52 from Alex Hales. Jake Libby, Tom Moores and Matthew Carter were the only players who got into the double figures. Moeen Ali picked up four wickets in the innings as his team won the match by a comfortable margin of 28 runs.

Brief Scores:

WORCS: 161/6 in 20 overs (Ed Barnard 42*, Moeen Ali 32, Samit Patel 2/26)

NOTTS: 133/9 in 20 overs (Alex Hales 52, Jake Libby 24, Moeen Ali 4/18)

Result: Worcestershire won by 28 runs.

Glamorgan vs Somerset – South Group

After being put in to bat first, Glamorgan set Somerset a massive target of 181 runs. David Lloyd and Colin Ingram scored half-centuries in real quick time. Jeremy Lawlor also chipped in with a handy 30-ball 43 while Roelof van der Merwe and Craig Overton picked up two wickets each.

However, this massive target was blown apart with ease after Tom Banton turned up with a 34-ball 64. In his maiden T20 Blast outing, Babar Azam scored 35 from 23 balls. An unbeaten 47 from Peter Trego later in the innings helped Somerset reach the target with two overs and eight wickets to spare.

Brief Scores:

GLAM: 180/5 in 20 overs (David Lloyd 57, Colin Ingram 50*, Roelof van der Merwe 2/17)

SOM: 181/2 in 18 overs (Tom Banton 64, Peter Trego 47*, Daniel Douthwaite 1/30)

Result: Somerset won by 8 wickets.