Yorkshire Earn a Home Quarter Final in the T20 Vitality Blast

A victory over Notts Outlaws in the North Group sees Yorkshire finish as the second place team with most points.

This match was mainly won by Yorkshire in the power play, with more runs being scored by, and fewer wickets being conceded by the Headingley side when batting first. Big but comfortable hitting from Adam Lyth and Will Luxton saw Yorkshire score over 70 runs for no wickets after the six overs of the power play. Lyth went on to reach an impressive 50, which included five 6s, before going LBW to Benny Howell in the seventh over. Luxton was caught off the bowling of Liam Patterson-White in the following over but had made a valuable contribution of 38 runs, the most impressive of which came from his on-drives.

Yorkshire in bat

Notts Outlaws’ bowling and fielding after the power play was particularly tight and made run scoring especially tricky. Economy rates of 9 runs or less from the four overs of Linde, Howell and Patterson-White were most notable here. It is always harder to find the gaps after the power play when a team can place more fielders on the boundary, but when accompanied by such bowling, wickets can also start to tumble in quick succession. Coming in at three, Root was caught off the bowling of Benny Howell for just 2 in the ninth over, and a batting collapse seemed possible in between 14.2 overs and 15.2 overs when Yorkshire went from 142-3 to 145-6. 

Some more highly restrictive bowling and fielding meant that, with just three overs left, it looked like Yorkshire would struggle to reach a truly competitive score. It felt like 200 runs would be a reasonable target but one ball into the eighteenth over, the home side were 159-8. It had taken them the previous four overs to simply score 20 runs and they only had two wickets to spare with seventeen balls left. However, Logan van Beek took Yorkshire right to the last ball with an inspired score of 28 runs (from eight in the batting order). Alongside Hassan Ali’s rapid 13 runs off the 4 balls, Yorkshire actually managed to end their innings 193-10. 

As I have already mentioned, Notts Outlaws did not have a successful power play in comparison to Yorkshire. Although Joe Clarke scored a rather reasonable 23 of 13 balls, before the end of the sixth over the away side were four wickets down. But then, bizarrely, Notts Outlaws’ run rate went up between the seventh and eleventh over, and they lost no wickets. Jack Haynes’ 37 off 25 balls (from three in the order), and Goerge Linde’s 25 off 14 balls (from six in the order) played a key part in this period of stable scoring and helped take the Outlaws to over 100 runs a little over the half way point of the second innings. 

As is cricket though, just when it started to look like the visitors might reach the target set, they fell victim to a couple of crucial wickets. In the case of this match, Dom Bess took two catches off the bowling of Andrew Tye in the last three balls of the eleventh over. Bess had already caught one off Root and one off his own bowling earlier on in the second innings, and with these additional catches, the Outlaws found themselves at 106-6 with 8 over left. The target score remained in reach but it again seemed like the lack of wickets remaining would be the biggest issue for the chasing team.

Even with a seventh wicket falling at 12.3 overs, the unpredictability of cricket started to shine through again. Despite all his great takes in blindingly sunny conditions, one drop from Dom Bess in the sixteenth over gave Dillan Pennington the chance to give the crowd a tense finish. And, take this opportunity he did, scoring 37 runs off 20 balls. In addition to Howell’s 30 runs off 30 balls. These contributions put Notts in a position where they needed less than 30 runs with three overs (or 18 balls) remaining. Yes, they only had 2 wickets left at this point, but Yorkshire had to remain fully focused on making sure their opponents didn’t get to the finish line. Indeed, many of the home fans were acutely aware that Notts Outlaws went into the match comfortably at the top of the North Group and therefore couldn’t be written off that easily. 

Fortunately for the home side, they did get the job done, bowling Notts out for 175 runs with 3 balls left. Yorkshire could never have overtaken Notts Outlaws in the North Group table, however they did achieve the aim of reaching 30 points in second place. With Gloucestershire losing their final match in the Central and West Group and Surrey losing their final match in the South Group, no other second place team has reached more than 28 points. So, Yorkshire can now look forward to a home quarter final against Somerset in the Vitality Blast this Wednesday.