[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

T20 Blast, North Group

vs Nottinghamshire

New Road, Worcester

Notts innings: The Pears won the toss and put the Outlaws in to bat on a muggy midsummer Thursday by the Severn. For the second game in a row Worcestershire had prepared a slow, sticky surface, but it was Dillon Pennington who once again struck first, banging the second ball of the game in short of a length on an off-stump line, tempting Alex Hales to shape for a square drive on the back foot, only to edge the sharply climbing ball behind for a golden duck instead. Spin then came to the fore in the next over as Mitchell Santner angled one in to the pads of Lyndon James, who tried to clip it to leg, but found it straightened and cannoned into his off-stump. 8-2 off the first eight deliveries, it required some careful re-upholstery from the visitors to reach 40-2 off the powerplay, with reverse sweeps very much the order of the day. But with the half-century partnership up, Joe Clarke was struggling to break the chains, and the pressure told as he slogged Brett D'Oliveira to deep midwicket for 19, before the skipper had Matt Montgomery caught for a run-a-ball 39. With two fresh batsmen at the crease, Worcestershire were more or less happy to let Haseeb Hameed dob singles here and there until he too felt the weight of the crawling scoreboard and hoisted Santner to long-on, while the promoted Shaheen Afridi also perished quickly and cheaply in the deep. Pat Brown claimed his 100th T20 wicket when Steven Mullaney toe-ended him to cover, and the very next delivery supplied his twenty-first scalp of the campaign as Calvin Harrison (evidently struck by the fanciful delusion he was Joe Root) moved across his stumps to ramp the ball, only to miss by a mile and find his middle peg uprooted. Eight wickets down, a cutthroat Worcestershire could easily have restricted the Notts total further, but some very poor fielding compounded our already-average death bowling; the 15 conceded by Brown in the final over included two astonishingly dire drops, prompting the (understandably) irate bowler to kick at the turf and ostensibly earn himself a word or two from the umpire. But the late hitting only lifted Notts up to 139-8, and it would have been a heroic effort indeed which defended that total even on a bowler-friendly wicket.

Worcs innings: Needing just seven an over, the Pears rightly took few early risks and chose their moments carefully. Targeting Lyndon James in the second over, Dolly memorably ramped a front-foot no-ball for 4, smashed the free hit over long-off for 6, then guided the next two deliveries with identical strokes through third man for four as part of a 22-run bonanza; but the fun was checked with the wicket of Jack Haynes for 2 in the third, caught at mid-on off Jake Ball with the score 27-1. Santner supplied 13 before chipping a return catch to Matt Carter, and though boundaries were still available off the spinners from the occasional bad ball, a distinct silly season of unnecessary shots set in during the middle overs as Dolly departed for 36, followed by Ben Cox and Kashif Ali in short order, leaving the Pears 80-5 with 60 still required from 51 balls. Thankfully, the heads on Adam Hose and Ed Pollock were far calmer, and the latter in particular excelled with a show of controlled aggression after an enormously difficult season so far, finding little profit in his usual pull shots, but driving superbly and pumping a couple of valuable boundaries down the ground. Hose was the man to finish the job, and Worcestershire took another big step towards the knockout stage.

Worcestershire WIN by five wickets

The Verdict: Another assured performance which raises hopes still further that the mid-campaign slump is behind us, and we may not embarrass ourselves tomorrow night on the annual trip to Edgbaston. There are still weaknesses, of course; the fielding tonight was particularly forgettable, and though Pat Brown had a right to feel aggrieved at the two final-over drops, it wasn't those drops that got hit for four and six. The batting also went unnecessarily gung-ho for a while until Hose and Pollock brought some calm to the crease, but ultimately, Worcs have now leapfrogged Notts into second place, and could potentially even do the same to the Bears in twenty-four hours. With some of our close competitors still to play each other, we're not quite over the line, but just one more win could potentially be enough.