Will Smeed, with the help of some late-night umpty from Sean Dickson and Lewis Gregory, carried Somerset to a thrilling victory in the T20 Blast final, as they hauled in a record-breaking run-chase against Hampshire that one moment hushed the crowd, the next had them roaring each pin ball into the stands.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Smeed as the smoke from the celebration fireworks drifted into the night. “I was looking at the target, and we knew we could do it, we back our boys further down the order, which makes a huge difference. They said they’d do it for me and they did.”
Smeed’s 94 off 58 balls always kept Somerset in the hunt, even after Tom Kohler-Cadmore, in sparkling form, was bowled by an 88mph yorker by Sonny Baker, back in the limelight after his England debut. And even in the tricky middle overs and as the clock ticked down.
Dickson, in his last white-ball game for the club before his move to Glamorgan, found his quarter-final touch after being dropped by Scott Currie on seven. Gregory’s 18 in five balls sealed the deal with an over to spare to bring Somerset their third Blast trophy – level with Hampshire and Leicestershire.
“We did it the hard way,” said Gregory – but no one cared if Blast Finals Day has not got the cachet that it once had with the rise of the Hundred and franchise tournaments round the world. No one at the ground had told the enthusiastic if occasionally dishevelled crowd, belting out a succession of stadium anthem specials, or the players whose despair, joy or fury was shown on the big screen, and who played entertaining cricket over 11 hours.
Toby Albert anchored Hampshire’s innings with a 48-ball 85. Photograph: Craig Brough/Action Images/Reuters
It was the end of a difficult week for Hampshire, who were deducted eight points for an unfit pitch to put them in relegation danger in the County Championship, and learned that they would lose the services of their head coach, Adrian Birrell, after seven years at the club.
It had looked their game to lose at the halfway stage after James Vince, with his usual casual rakishness, and Toby Albert, touch-perfect as befits the Blast’s leading run scorer in 2025, gave Hampshire a blazing start in a partnership of 97. They had both slotted fifties in the same over from Lewis Goldsworthy – Vince’s 46th in T20 Blast games – when Vince was caught.
James Fuller soon followed but Albert pressed the accelerator, four times reversing his wrists and reaching the rope, a whirlwind of trick shots until Gregory finally sent him on his way for 85. Benny Howell kept up the momentum and Hampshire finished with the second highest score in Blast history. But it was not quite enough.
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Earlier, Hampshire’s Australian Chris Lynn had flamed the first T20 Finals Day hundred to ruin Northamptonshire’s hopes of repeating their quarter-final miracle. He moved from 78 to 108 in the space of one devastating over, sending Lloyd Pope into a Hollies stand of ecstatic sombreros and swaying bananas with five successive sixes. He finished 108 not out, hitting every one of Hampshire’s 11 sixes to carry them to a six-wicket win under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method.
Somerset had romped to a 23-run victory in the first semi-final, beating an underpowered Lancashire, with the veteran Jimmy Anderson but without England’s Luke Wood, Phil Salt, Jos Buttler and Saqib Mahmood, and overseas players Ashton Turner (back in Australia) and Chris Green (at the Caribbean Premier League). Lancashire’s chase of Somerset’s 182 had hinged on Liam Livingstone, whose mimed disbelief when the third umpire upheld the on-field lbw decision when he was on 29 suggested a tickle of bat. Somerset’s fielding was fiery and when Lancashire retired out George Balderson only for his replacement Tom Hartley to hit his first ball straight to long-off, the die was cast.