Jamie Smith hands Trent Rockets their first loss of the season as Overton, Worrall, Wood and Gleeson bowled brilliantly.
Promoted Jamie Smith hands Rockets season’s first defeat.
Under the lights at Lord’s, London Spirit successfully repelled Trent Rockets’ attack to record their second victory and open up the Hundred Men’s competition.
The victory puts them in a five-way tie at the top, while Spirit maintained their composure to win it by 21 runs, ruining the Rockets’ chances of pulling off a third straight run chase to grab the lead.
The game was exquisitely poised at the halfway point of the Rockets’ chase, even with the eventual victory margin. Banton had just hit Dan Worrall for an 89-meter six as he and Joe Root had carved out 69 for the first wicket.
However, Spirit got to work when Jamie Overton got rid of Banton in a bizarre way, with the opener angling a dab against his own stumps to leave for 46. Worrall’s subsequent set, which featured David Willey and Rehan Ahmed falling within three balls of each other after the latter was clean-bowled by a stunning away cutter, completely changed the course of the match.
The Rockets had lost four wickets in 14 deliveries when Root mistimed his sweep shot against Liam Dawson five balls later, falling for 27. This effectively ended their ambitions of completing a record chase at Lord’s in the Hundred. Marcus Stoinis’s final burst of muscle was too little, too late.
Overton, Worrall, Luke Wood, and Richard Gleeson, Spirit’s speed attack, hunted beautifully together and fired down the fastest tournament delivery to date, a 94.1 mph yorker.
Spirit’s star player was Jamie Smith at bat. When he was promoted to open, he was unstoppable. He reached his half-century in 32 balls and shared a 73-run partnership with Kane Williamson, which allowed Ashton Turner to score a rapid 16-ball 30 at the end.
Smith said: “It’s been difficult at times at home for us, so to come out here and get a win here in front of a fantastic crowd is really important and steps us on for the next few games we’ve got coming up here.
“Our seamers took the pace off, and we used the ground dimensions really nicely, and most importantly we kept taking wickets, which stemmed the flow for them.
“It’s nice to get some runs, especially on a new ground and playing for a new team. It’s good to start well, and we’ve got a quality team. I just need to keep building the relationships with the guys at the top of the order, David Warner and Kane Williamson, and the players we’ve got throughout.”