Ravi Bopara after his sensational century in the semis, saying ‘When I feel a bit dead, that’s when I’m at my best’.
On an exciting night at the Kia Oval, Ravi Bopara turned back the clock with a spectacular century, his third in a T20 career that has now lasted 22 years and nearly 500 individual matches. This helped Northamptonshire defeat the tournament favourites, Surrey, and advance to Vitality Blast Finals Day.
Bopara has been around for so long that he was old enough to play in the first Twenty20 Cup in June 2003, when he played for Essex versus Surrey in the second-ever Twenty20 match. However, at 40, he delivered what may have been his best knock in the format to give Northants a chance to win the Blast for the third time, and for the first time since 2016.
When Northants, who were asked to bat first, collapsed to 1 for 2 in the opening over, the match had already been cut down to 14 overs each because of the intense nighttime rain. Jordan Clark got rid of David Willey for a duck with his sixth delivery and Ricardo Vasconcelos with his first.
Bopara, however, was undaunted by the difficult circumstances and insisted that Northamptonshire’s strategy was to “just keep going” in spite of the danger posed by a Surrey squad that had won eight of its eleven games in the competition’s group rounds and topped the South Group.
“It was an amazing win,” Bopara told Sky Sports as he accepted his player-of-the-match award. “We knew there was going to be a bit of rain about, and we knew that this pitch might nibble at the start, but our philosophy was ‘just keep going’ and it will come off. And today it did.
“We’re always going to stick with it. Because if someone has a day out, you end up posting a score like that. If someone gets a quick 80 or 100, you’re away.”
“I don’t know if I’m getting better, but I was thinking about it all night,” he said. “I didn’t have that fire in my belly today, and that’s when I prefer it, when I feel a bit dead. That’s when I feel like I’m going to perform my best. It doesn’t always work, but [when it does] it’s good.”
He also praised his team’s bowling effort for closing out the contest, despite a battling 69 not out from 38 balls from Surrey’s captain, Sam Curran.
“It was very slippery out there,” Bopara said. “The chat was just to hold length. Length was the hardest ball to hit because it just nipped a little bit, and didn’t come off the surface at the same pace. We faltered from our plan a little bit in the middle, which brought them back into the game, but then went back to it towards the death. So that was good stuff.”