Groups boiling up as 12 counties vie for six knockout slots
Gloucestershire hold the only 100% record at the midpoint of the group stage, as 50 overs cricket proves its worth
Ball one: if it’s Monday, it’s The Oval
The Metro Bank One Day Cup is already at the halfway point (or beyond) of the round robin stage, with the top three in each group qualifying for the knockout matches to come in just ten days time!
Without peeking, do you know how your county is doing, still less the fate of local rivals or that one you’ve always had a soft spot for since the barman replaced the pint that was knocked out of your hand in 1987?
Compact competitions are often easier to follow than those that sprawl across the calendar or stop and start (I’m looking at you, Vitality Blast, asleep on the sofa) but, notwithstanding the chronic under-reporting of the One Day Cup, is it possible to define a narrative at all? Matches are scheduled every day – except the days that they’re not, like last Saturday, this Saturday and next (Bank Holiday) Monday – and there are no defined game weeks after which one can look at the table, take stock, and consider what is to come.
As with much else in cricket, the feeling persists that it could all be done better for fans, for players and for sponsors. And they’re the constituencies that really matter… Aren’t they?
Ball two: Taylor suits white ball cricket
Gloucestershire are sitting pretty at the top of Group A, courtesy of the only 100% record in the country, even more impressive as they are one of the counties past the midpoint of their league campaign having played five matches. It would take an unlikely combination of results to deny them a slot in the knockouts, but the clever structure of eliminations, byes and home advantages means there’s still a lot to play for once they, or anyone else, secures progression to the next phase.
As if to underline my point above, would any non-Gloucestershire fan or a person not openly out as a cricket badger be able to name their captain? A hint – he also held aloft last year’s Blast trophy too.
You’re looking for batter-who-bowls, Jack Taylor, who came to the the crease at Worcester after Oliver Price’s 66 and immediately lost Ben Charlesworth after his handy 50. Not a crisis, but with 80 needed off 17 overs, four down, Worcestershire had the first sniff of a win in a match they had been chasing since losing the toss. Taylor compiled a half-century at better than a run a ball and in the company of another old pro, Graeme van Buuren, steered his team home.
In the Brave New World that always hovers just beyond the grasp of administrators looking at the product and its content, there might not be a place for the likes of Taylor and van Buuren. They’ve never played senior international cricket and, unless they can turn up a Monagasque relative or some such, never will. They’ll be surplus to requirements on the powerpoints that so easily dazzle the tech bros who are the pipers about to call the domestic cricket tune with their franchise riches.
Ask a Gloucestershire fan, or a fan of any other county, if players like those two matter should have a place in the English game come 2027 – I suspect the answer will be rather different.
Ball three: Orr strikes gold at last
Do you remember growing up? God knows, I’ve tried to forget, but I just about can. It wasn’t easy. And that’s without going to work every day facing people armed with a bat or a ball literally trying to beat you. Professional sport is mainly a young person’s thing, a brutal sifting of winners and losers – no wonder some find it a tough path to follow.
Ali Orr was one of the Sussex youngsters given a chance in those strange Covid summers and named in this column back in 2021 as a bright prospect along with Tom Haines, Aaron Thomason, Danial Ibrahim, Jack Carson, Henry Crocombe and Jamie Atkins. Injury, a move to Hampshire and navigating changes and setbacks meant that the last of his seven centuries came in May 2024.
He ended that barren spell with 131 that played a part in an opening stand of 202 with his captain, Nick Gubbins, making the win over Leicestershire a formality and keeping Hampshire well positioned for a top three placing. Orr is still only 24 and that knock could be the start of his second coming of a fine batter.
Ball four: Milnes marmalises Middlesex
Group B is the tighter of the two with five counties in with a decent shout of a qualification slot and even Durham, in sixth, not out of it yet.
Yorkshire, with Imam-ul-Haq back after missing the defeat at York vs Somerset, travelled to Radlett to play Middlesex for the honour of leading the standings after five games.
Though the prolific Pakistani notched an undefeated half century, the match was won by the Yorkshire bowlers who had the home side 5-3 and then 129 all out, the match done in 58 overs. The damage was inflicted by the ever-reliable Ben “Betsy” Coad with 3-26 from his ten overs and Matt Milnes, 4-29 from his eight.
Both seamers are 31 and know their own games. and that of most batters, inside out and make an ideal pair for a competition like this, Milnes will be motivated to leave Headingley with a parting gift of a cup as he heads back to Kent after his three year sojourn up north. You wouldn’t bet against it.
Ball five: Carson drives Sussex home
The first of two hard fought tussles that underlined just what a fine format 50 over cricket can be, came at a sun-kissed Hove where one of those names from Ball Three became the late hero.
It was a match that ebbed and flowed, Lancashire’s openers pinging some friendly bowling to the boundary in the powerplay, Michael Jones 82 off 77 the highlight, before Sussex’s spinners, Jack Carson and Archie Lenham, pulled things back. It needed some pyrotechnics from Harry Singh to get Lanky up to 338/7, a score they must have felt confident in defending.
At 241/1 after 33 overs, that confidence had evaporated like ice cream dropped on the promenade pavement, but the impressive Arav Shetty snared Tom Clark for a brilliant 139, then nabbed Fynn Hudson-Prentice and John Simpson in short order and, when Tom Haines went for 90, the anchor was gone and the home side were all at sea, 54 off nine overs suddenly very distant.
Calm heads were required and few were clearer in their thinking than Jack Carson who turned into peak Michael Bevan, finishing matters with good running and two sixes just when his team needed them.
680 runs, the result in doubt until the third ball of the last over was clobbered to the fence by number 11, Sean Hunt, and a home victory to boot. It’s not a bad game is it?
Ball six: Lintott trots up in good time
Just to show it was no fluke, there was another cracker served up two days later, this time at Taunton.
Tom Lammonby notched a round 100, somewhat surprisingly his first in white ball cricket, before the Rew brothers inevitably got in on the act with 81 (James) and 41 (Thomas). But, from 218/3 with more than ten overs still to come, a target of just 310 gave Warwickshire a chance they might not have expected.
The visitors developed a habit of losing wickets at a bad time, the top seven all getting in but nobody topping Rob Yates’s 47. Cue Jake Lintott, back in his home town and in at number eight with 67 needed at just more than a run a ball. He bagged 50 of them himself in the company of wicketkeeper, Kai Smith, and, when he was done, so was the match.
Both sides are locked on 12 points in second and third, with both sides hosting their last group matches at home. If it does go to the wire, the noise will be big!