Birmingham Bears (Warwickshire) storm into the quarterfinals by thrashing Derbyshire Falcons in their final league stage fixture. We hope you enjoyed the coverage of this game as much as we did bringing it to you. The commentator was Darpan Tikiya and scorer was Chandan Kumar Singh. Time for both of us to sign off. Keep following CREX for more cricketing action from around the world. Sayonara!
1:34 AM IST, 9:04 PM local time: Birmingham Bears (Warwickshire) win by 127 runs and qualify for the quarterfinals.
Nothing but despair for Derbyshire on their final night in the competition. Coming into this match, they obviously had no chances of qualifying for the next round. However, the fans still turned up in good numbers to support the home team that was playing for pride. Alas, they go home despondent.
Perhaps, what is even more disappointing than the result is the manner in which Derbyshire have lost this one. They have not just been defeated, but rather mauled ruthlessly.
The Bears' openers set it up. Both Tom Latham and Alex Davies were watchful up front against Allah Mohammad Ghazanfar's mystery spin and took the first couple of overs to get their eye in. But then, they started unfurling shots all around the dial and eventually notched up a monumental 187-run partnership. For a change, tonight the left-hander took upon the aggressor's role.
We saw a number of cross-batted swishes, some idiosyncratic sweeps and also a couple of lovely off side shots from Latham, who scored a century. On the other hand, the skipper was effervescent as ever, but seemed to have just run out of steam towards the end. He got out on 89. Ben Aitchison picking three wickets in the final overs was the only saving grace for the Falcons.
The writing was pretty much on the wall at the half way stage. The little hope that was left was thrown out of the window in the powerplay itself. The hosts were 4-down by the end of the 6th over and what followed post that were mere formalities. Barring Jacob Bethell, every bowler who rolled his arm over, picked up a wicket at least. Left arm leggie Lintott finished with three to his name.
W CAUGHT AND BOWLED! That seals a quarterfinal spot for the Birmingham Bears. Derbyshire have been mauled. And that sums up their T20 season for the summer of 2025. On paper, they had decent side, but it did not translate into consistent performances on the ground. Ghazanfar wanted to have some fun and hence, shuffled to the leg side for this one. Briggs followed him up with a good length ball and in the end, the batter ended up hitting it back to the bowler.