Across a gloomy, grey but mercifully dry few hours at a near-deserted Trent Bridge Somerset added defeat in the One-Day Cup final to their season of excruciating close shaves and infuriating near-misses, Glamorgan snaffling the trophy for the second time in four years as a delayed, abbreviated final was somehow squeezed between the downpours.
Across nine days Somerset have now lost in the final of the T20 Blast, seen their pursuit of the County Championship title curtailed with defeat at Lancashire, and now been beaten to the One-Day Cup – a fate they might have avoided had the game lasted even five minutes longer, by which time the rain had returned.
The only stage when their target of 187 looked achievable was as Sean Dickson, Archie Vaughan and the occasional stroke of good fortune accelerated their chase in the closing stages, but when the former fell with 15 balls remaining his team still required 32; they scored barely half of them and lost by 15 runs.
A dismally damp Sunday had pushed the game into its reserve day, and with the coachloads of fans who endured hours of relentless rainfall on the weekend having returned home, and a forecast that contrasted with the previous day only by being even more miserable, a scant handful of supporters were present when an extraordinary early-morning effort from the ground staff allowed play to start on schedule, with the game having been negotiated down to the minimum permissible 20 overs a side.
After losing the toss, and then two wickets in two balls with the score still in single figures, Glamorgan recovered gradually and then accelerated rapidly. When Colin Ingram, comfortably their top scorer in the competition going into the final (a title he eventually clung on to, by the margin of a single run, from Billy Root) was dismissed for a run-a-ball 11 midway through the ninth over their score stood at 65 for four, and reasons for optimism were as hard to make out as sunshine. They limped to the halfway point of their innings without further loss, but having scored a sober 71.
The trajectory of the innings changed with Root’s partnership with Sam Northeast, and together they added 78 off 50 balls. More than a third of those runs came off a single Kasey Aldridge over that went for 29 and ended with a beamer that Northeast managed to pull for four while in the process of falling down, and a subsequent free hit that was heaved down the ground for the over’s third six.
Though Root fell soon afterwards, and the potentially destructive Dan Douthwaite followed three balls later in calamitous fashion, run out off a no-ball, Glamorgan’s innings was turbocharged to a daunting total once Timm van der Gugten joined Northeast in the middle. The Dutchman hit five of his nine deliveries to the boundary, once clearing it, to end with 26 while Northeast’s 49-ball 63 earned him the player of the match award.
Somerset may regret their decision not to bowl any spin, despite having two spinners in their side, and more than anything their inaccuracy with the ball: they gave away 15 extras, including nine wides, and received just three in return.
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Like Glamorgan’s their innings started slowly, but unlike their rivals it never truly caught fire: it took them 15 balls to find a first boundary, and after five overs they were 23 for one where their opponents had been 42 for two.
Despite worsening conditions – a swirling white ball and a grey, misty sky are an unhelpful combination, as Kiran Carlson demonstrated in somehow dropping Ben Green in the 18th over – and rising tension – as Andy Gorvin demonstrated in somehow failing to run Green out moments later – the rain held off, and Glamorgan clung on.
