Unbeaten run ends in last ball thriller
4 August 2018
After taking 11 points from a possible 12 over the previous six games in the Vitality T20 Blast, Gloucestershire went down to their first defeat since the opening South Group match at Taunton as Glamorgan beat them by two runs in Cardiff.
A game which had no fewer than 24 sixes, penalty runs and a bowler being hit just above his nose by a shot from the batsman on strike reached the final ball with Gloucestershire needing three runs to win or two to tie.
It was a position made possible by Andrew Tye, who had struck two huge sixes from the previous three balls, but Timm van der Gugten's yorker from the final delivery stopped the Australian from repeating the feat and decided a high scoring affair in Glamorgan's favour.
Watch Andrew Tye's post match interview here:
POST MATCH REACTION: An honest AJ Tye reflects on being a central figure in tonight's defeat by 2 runs to @GlamCricket pic.twitter.com/7t69PlQb9u
— Gloucestershire CCC (@Gloscricket) August 3, 2018
Both teams were unchanged from wins earlier in the week and after winning the toss on a sunny Cardiff evening Michael Klinger asked Glamorgan to bat. This, though, was to be a very different affair to Wednesday's tussle with Sussex at Hove.
Gloucestershire's problems centred around their inability to control the runs scored against bowlers from the river Taff end of the ground, which has a short straight boundary. Glamorgan scored 60 runs in the powerplay, 45 of them in the three overs bowled by Higgins, Tye and Howell. The tally for the Glamorgan innings as a whole was 123, compared to 79 from the other end.
Aneurin Donald set the tone in the second over when he hit Ryan Higgins out of the ground and Tye was soon despatched over extra cover. It was therefore a relief to see David Payne respond to Khajawa driving him over long off by bowling the Australian for 20.
Donald made 31 before an attempted ramp shot against Howell went straight to Tom Smith at point in the tenth over, but at 90-2 the home side were well set and it was Craig Meschede who cemented the work of those around him in the second half of the innings.
Batting at number three - higher than usual because of the absence of Colin Ingram through illness - he made a career best 77* from 47 balls with four fours and five sixes, one of each in the final over from Andrew Tye which cost 25 runs. Tye's one success - removing Kiran Carlson for 15 as Klinger took a well judged catch - came in a spell where Gloucestershire briefly reigned Glamorgan in, only for skipper Chris Cooke to release the shackles and take 16 off an over from Tom Smith which WASN'T bowled from the river end.
Three wickets in seven balls - two to Benny Howell and one to Payne - might have kept Glamorgan to a total below 190 until Meschede's late onslaught, and it left Gloucestershire chasing hard from ball one with a score of 201-6 against them.
Predictably, Miles Hammond tried to give the innings some instant imputus, making 21 from only 10 deliveries before Khawaja safely held a steepling catch off Hogan. Skipper Michael Klinger, normally such a strong exponent of a similarly short boundary at one end of the Brightside Ground, had played conservatively during the powerplay and it was his first forceful shot to that end against Ruaidhri Smith that proved his downfall, Smith also removing Ian Cockbain in the same over to a catch at the wicket.
At 58-3 from seven overs, a total of 202 looked a long way off and even when Benny Howell twice sent Smith over the rope the run rate wasn't coming down. His departure - bowled by Graham Wagg's first ball - brought together Ryan Higgins and Jack Taylor, and two of the cleanest hitters in the Gloucestershire side set about turning the game around. They very nearly managed it.
Their stand of 57 came up in just 4.5 overs, Higgins making 37 from 29 balls including two maximums off Meschede, and Taylor firing a full toss back at Graham Wagg which hit the bowler full in the face. Unsurprisingly, he had to go off. Higgins' attempted blow over long on fell short in the 16th over, Donald taking the catch and it left Taylor as Gloucestershire's most likely match winner.
He had got off the mark by hitting Wagg over mid wicket, and survived one chance when he had made 30, shortly after hitting van der Gugten into the biggest stand at Sophia Gardens.
42 runs were required from the last three overs, and with three boundaries from the first and Taylor completing his fifty with a six in the second, Gloucestershire got the target down to 16 from the final six deliveries only for Taylor's fierce attack to be ended immediately as van der Gugten bowled him for 52 made from just 21 balls.
Tye then tried his best to complete the job, only to fall tantalisingly short.
