As Glamorgan’s winning batter, Sam Northeast, put it, it was “the right thing to do in the circumstances.” Following Surrey’s victory in the County Championship on Friday and their defeat in the T20 Blast final at Edgbaston, Somerset’s captain, Sean Dickson, echoed that sentiment, saying his main feeling was pride even though his team had lost three titles in a week.
In the Metro Bank One-Day Cup final at Trent Bridge, Glamorgan overcame Somerset and inclement weather to win the championship they had last held in 2021, following a first-day washout. The match was pragmatistically shortened from 50 overs a side to 20 overs a side in order to maximise the likelihood of a result.
After leading his team in scoring with 63 not out from 49 balls, Northeast told the ECB Reporters Network, “We hadn’t played any Twenty20 for a while so it was strange coming into a 20-over contest.” “The change from 50 to 20 overs, approximately 40 minutes before, meant we had to adapt as best we could because we had no idea we would even get a game.
As we were disembarking from the event, it began to rain, indicating that someone was obviously watching us. I’m happy that they changed. In the given situation, starting the game was the proper course of action.”
After winning the toss and electing to bowl, Somerset had established a strong early lead thanks to two wickets taken in the opening over by their 21-year-old left-arm seamer, Alfie Ogborne. But at crucial parts of the match, especially when Northeast, Billy Root, and Timm van der Gugten were speeding through the latter portion of their innings to add 115 in the last ten overs, the team’s inexperience was revealed.
Northeast stated, “We weren’t really sure what a good score was.” Thus, in my opinion, it was all about forming alliances, gaining some traction, and attempting to pick up speed as soon as we felt comfortable with the pitch.
“We first believed that 160 runs may be sufficient, but Timm van der Gugten’s final innings gave us what we believed to be a respectable score—one that we knew would be competitive. Will Smale gave us a little lead early on, so we had something to build on. Billy Root and Timm both struck the ball pretty cleanly.”
Ten players who had participated in this year’s Men’s Hundred, which took place in tandem with the group stages, were absent for Somerset because they choose to support the players who had led them to the championship. Jack Leach, England’s left-arm spinner, was their most experienced player on the day, but he did not receive a bowl due to the wet weather and the List A regulation fields that restricted the number of outfielders during the middle overs.
“As a county, we’ve ended up winning nothing when we would have liked to finish with at least one or two trophies,” Sean Dickson stated.
The fact is, though, that as a team, we are quite happy of having been able to fight for three championships.
“We have resisted the need to start players who we lost to the Hundred in this competition, therefore I’m quite delighted that this group in especially advanced all the way to the championship.
Instead of having a complete washout and sharing the trophy, we were more delighted today to be able to go out and try to win on the pitch. Everyone wants a shot at attempting to win; nobody wants to share a trophy.
“As a T20, we had no trouble at all. Like them, all we wanted to do was play a game. We were all in agreement after talking with the match referee, the umpires, and the ECB referee who was there.
“We could spend all day analysing who won and lost, but I believe they bowled more effectively than we did. It certainly offered something with the new ball up top on the newly created pitch.
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“Our bowlers were slipping and sliding all over the place, which was unfortunate, but that’s what you get for choosing to bowl first and we just have to take our medicine and move forward.”
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