Twenty20 celebrations for Lancs
No CommentsI know it’s only a pre-season competition, but Lancashire coach Peter Moores has his first title after seeing his side claim the inaugural Barbados Twenty20 Cricket Cup title this evening.
Lancashire virtually played flawless cricket in each of the three matches, although they were pushed the closest by the Barbados XI on Saturday evening.
They hammered both Essex and the students of the University of the West Indies XI, the latter being in the final, at the Kensington Oval today.
While Steven Croft will probably take the tag of Lancashire’s player of the day with 52 in the semi and 46 in the final, Stephen Moore undoubtedly played the innings of the competition with 91 not out off 59 balls in the final.
Moorey, as he’s been nicknamed in the dressing room, clobbered seven sixes and five fours as Lancashire amassed 183-3. In fact, he walloped four sixes in the 17th over alone!
The fact that Lancashire’s innings included 13 sixes is a massive positive. It’s a simple point, but you need people who can clear the ropes in the 20-over form of the game. They seem to have found one in Stephen Moore.
Although the students started their chase well, they were never really in the running to take the pot.
The one thing that has struck me over the last 12 months or so, not just this weekend, is that Lancashire’s players all know their specific roles within the side.
Role awareness was something the squad talked about during their 2006 run to the C&G Trophy final, but I reckon it was lacking in ’07 and ’08 for one reason or another.
I don’t think that’s just confined to T20 cricket either. The Lightning had a good one-day season all round last season.
I guess we’ll see whether my point is further vindicated over the next two days when they play a couple 40-over matches, the first of which is against Derbyshire at the Weymouth ground tomorrow.
I had to chuckle at the misfortunes of the Yorkshire Radio crew who are out here covering Yorkshire’s pre-season fortunes.
They had talked up this Twenty20 weekend as the chance to follow Yorkshire’s matches live, and that they would also be providing ball by ball commentary on the other matches at Kensington too.
What they didn’t bank on was Yorkshire getting bundled out of the competition – or into the Plate game at the 3 Ws ground to be more precise – in the very first match by UWI.
They were left to head up to Cave Hill with no commentary facilities up there, and had to trudge back to Kensington to commentate on a Lancashire victory in the final. Needless to say, it wasn’t a neutral commentary.
I also had a chat to former West Indies pace bowler Wayne Daniel, who was commentating for a local station today, about Daren Powell. Some very interesting stuff from the big man about Powell being a work horse, but lacking the pace he once had.
