T20 Blast 2019, Day 13: Round Up

Hampshire skipper and World Cup winner James Vince stole the Thursday's show with an emphatic 87 off 54 balls.

Published - 02 Aug 2019, 05:17 IST | Updated - 02 Aug 2019, 05:17 IST

3 Min Read

Another exciting day at the T20 Blast saw Gloucestershire come very close to snatching a win out of nowhere in their South Group game against Glamorgan, but Andrew Tye’s heroics saw the game end in a stalemate, which eventually was the fair result. The other two games on the day produced a lot of runs as well, ensuring the Ashes exploits were not the only talking points of the day.

In the Sophia Gardens, Gloucestershire won the toss and decided to field first. Fakhar Zaman and David Lloyd gave the batting unit a swashbuckling start, adding 75 runs in just 8.3 overs. The likes of Colin Ingram and Billy Root couldn’t do much on the day, but Fakhar’s fifty and Chris Cooke’s late fireworks helped their side notch 172 runs batting first.

Despite a couple of early wickets, Michael Klinger, Ian Cockbain and Ryan Higgins kept Gloucestershire alive in the game. But Andrew Salter had other ideas and picked up three crucial wickets in his second spell, registering figures of 4/12 in 3 overs. Just when the game was slipping away, an unbeaten 18-ball 38 from Tye took the game to the final over and ensured both teams could muster only one point.

Blake and Kuhn steer Kent to an easy win

Middlesex’s decision to bowl first against Kent proved to be a howler eventually as the Kent batsmen piled on the agony right from the beginning. But their innings really picked up momentum when South African Heino Kuhn and Alex Blake came together and started toying with the bowlers. Both batsmen registered splendid half-centuries as Kent put up a massive 204 onboard batting first.

Even for a star-studded line up of Eoin Morgan, AB de Villiers and Paul Stirling, this was going to be a challenging score and the likes of Mohammad Nabi and Hardus Viljoen ensured Kent had the upper hand most of the time in the second innings. They picked up the big wickets early as Middlesex’s innings never looked like reaching the target. They could only manage 176 runs and handed a 28-run, which saw Kent continue their unbeaten streak.

Tom Westley and Adam Wheater put up an 81-run stand after Essex lost a wicket off their first ball. It seemed like the duo set up a good platform for the coming batsmen to take over, but that wasn’t to be the case. An outstanding bowling effort from Mason Crane, Chris Wood and Liam Dawson helped Hampshire bowl their opponents out for 133 runs with 20 deliveries still remaining.

Mohammad Amir provided an early breakthrough for Essex, but the Hampshire innings was led by a brilliant one-man show from World Cup winner James Vince. Vince, who’s also the captain of Hampshire, amassed an outstanding 87 off 54 deliveries to help his side chase the total down in just 15.4 overs.