On Sunday 5th May Somerset VICC won the rearranged 2018 BCEW David Townley Memorial Twenty20 Cup Final to claim both their second major trophy & their second T20 cup triumph.
Finals day was rained off in September 2018 so had to be played at the start of this season. The event was held at Fordhouses Cricket Club in Wolverhampton for the first time & both the venue & the weather contributed to a high quality day’s cricket.
Somerset’s day started with a hard fought 8 wicket win against Yorkshire Vikings. Yorkshire had the better of the start with Nathan Jameson blasting 80 to help his side recover from 17/2. When he was finally dismissed Ryan Wilcock added a rapid 31 not out to see his side to 165/6 with Martin Hallett & Rory Hossell taking 2 wickets each. Rory (48) & brother Ed (83) took Yorkshire’s attack apart in response & although both were dismissed with the score on 153 the game was long since over by that point & an 8 wicket win swiftly followed.
In the other semi final Lancashire Lions started well against Northants Steelbacks as they raced to 63/0, but it all fell apart from that point on as Northants astonishingly claimed all ten Lions wickets with just 31 more runs added. Mark Dodsworth & Shah Miah took 3 wickets each. Northants lost two early wickets in response before 15 year old David Howells took control with 56 not out from just 26 balls & with support from Shah Miah (34 not out) Northants won by 8 wickets with more than 12 overs to spare.
This was a noteable achievement as Northants have been playing since 2005 & in that time they had never reached any cup final or finished higher than fourth in the BCEW National League, in fact they have suffered more last place finishes in the league than any other team to have ever played blind cricket. So by reaching the final Northants proved to all teams that if you keep trying & keep doing development work you can improve & start to gain success.
The third place play off was a high scoring affair as Yorkshire’s 224/2 featuring 98 from Nathan Jameson & 83 not out from Chris Ashburn edged out Lancashire’s 208/6 which was highlighted by 88 from Tahseen Sabir & 49 from Wasim Afridi.
The final between Somerset VICC & Northants Steelbacks was just the second final of any national competition since 2002 not to feature at least one of Metro, Sussex or Warwickshire. Somerset won the toss & a brilliant opening spell restricted the score & saw two wickets fall. Eventually Northants recovered to post 128/8 largely thanks to 56 from Howard Greenhill & 37 from David Howells. Ed Hossell bowled a superb spell as he claimed 4 wickets & Steve Cook chipped in with 2 wickets.
Somerset paced their reply superbly, Shah Miah did manage to bowl Rory Hossell with the score on 37 but Graham Glover came in & provided stability at one end whilst Ed Hossell set about chasing down the target. Ed was eventually caught by Hugh Spence off Dave Keeling’s bowling for his second 83 of the day, but Rob Crisp & Glover saw Somerset home for an 8 wicket win.
Ed Hossell was named partially sighted player of the day for his 166 runs, 5 wickets & 2 catches across his two matches, whilst Martin Wilson of Yorkshire was named Low Sighted Player of the day for bowling well in both of his side’s games.
BCEW would like to thank Colin Thompson & his team at Fordhouses CC for the excellent job they did of hosting the tournament, as well as Roger Barker who managed the day on BCEW’s behalf.