Warwickshire regroup to beat Lancashire

With games coming quick and fast over these Vitality t20 cup matches, teams rarely get time to put things right. Lancashire were back out in the field less than half an hour after Sussex had defeated them. Warwickshire had the good part of two and a half hours to figure out the best course of action.

What Warwickshire had done wrong in the first game was to try and look for the boundary ball. It wasn’t that type of pitch. They put that right in this game by running the singles and twos hard and well. It put the pressure on the Lancashire bowlers.

The boundaries, of course, did follow as Warwickshire made the highest score of the day with 126 for 4. Their two openers got the side off to a great start as the put on 58 for the first wicket. There was no shade for the Lancashire bowlers and it started to show. Gwenan Davies was the first wicket to fall having added 34 from 36 balls.

Milly Home continued the momentum with 25 from 26 balls as she supported Ria Fackrell. Fackrell only scored 2 fours in her innings of 37, but it allowed the other batters to play their shots and never allowed the Lancashire bowlers to settle. Batting last on a pitch in the last game was always going to be difficult and it proved so as Lancashire were reduced to 39 for 4. Becky Grundy ensured that the Lancashire middle-order were dismissed without any fuss.

Grundy was on a hat-trick when she had the advancing Kate Cross stumped and then Alex Hartley sweeping and missing her first ball. It was a lost cause for Lancashire after that although Nalisha Patel with 25 not out and Millie Hodge 9 not out added an unbroken ninth-wicket partnership. Lancashire finished 26 runs short.

It is a result that leaves Warwickshire one of three teams just four points behind league leaders Middlesex. Each team having two games left to play.