Gloucestershire claimed the first T20 Blast title in the club’s history with a stunning eight-wicket victory over holders Somerset in the final at Edgbaston.
Jack Taylor’s team followed their eight-wicket semi-final defeat of Sussex with another superbly professional performance against their west country rivals, who were strong favourites after beating Surrey in the other semi-final but were soundly beaten in the decider with 30 balls to spare.
Openers Miles Hammond (58 not out) and Cameron Bancroft (53) broke the back of the chase after putting on 112 for the first wicket as Gloucestershire chased a modest target of 125 on a slow pitch that had yielded runs at a miserly rate for most of the day.
Matt Taylor (three for 19) and David Payne (three for 27), who have shared 61 Blast wickets this season, were again Gloucestershire’s biggest weapons with the ball as they showed themselves masters of the conditions, the county lifting their first silverware for nine years.
Taylor snared his three in the powerplay, Payne inflicting damage at the end of the innings. Only Somerset skipper Lewis Gregory’s 53 off 37 balls kept Somerset in the game as they were bowled out for 124 in 19.4 overs.
Gloucestershire were the outsiders on the day, having qualified for the knock-out stages only on net run-rate after winning their last two South Group games, before upsetting Birmingham Bears on this ground in the quarter-finals.
Their last trophy success came in 2015 in the One-Day Cup, which Somerset will hope to win in next weekend’s against Glamorgan after seeing their hopes of landing a treble come to an end.
Payne, who finished the campaign as the Blast’s leading wicket-taker with 33 wickets, said: “I think we probably won it with the ball in that first half of the match. It was quite a good toss to win, it didn’t perhaps get as dewy as we thought it would but the ball did seem to come on a bit better in the second half.
“It was a pretty good effort by the bowling pack to keep them to 120-odd, although we didn’t think we would chase it down as well as we did. It was pretty clinical in the end.
“We snuck in through the back door really with a few things going our way but you feel that when you get into the knock-outs it is anyone’s to win and there was a real belief and confidence in the side that we could do it.
“It’s a strange feeling because a lot of the Somerset guys are my Welsh Fire team-mates but they and Surrey have set the bar high in that T20 format and we will take immense pride from beating them. It is pretty special.”
Somerset batter Tom Kohler-Cadmore said: “We didn’t get enough runs on the board when we batted and we felt the pitch got better as the evening wore on.
“It really hurts tonight but you win and lose games and when it is that comfortable you have to accept that you were nowhere good enough on the night. So fair play to Gloucestershire, congratulations to them – all we can do is move on to the next game.”
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