T20 Blast: Quarterfinal 1 Review: Kent gets a dent in the knockouts

The knockout stages in the T20 Blast have begun on Thursday, nearly after six days since the league stage has ended. Kent was hosting Lancashire for the first quarterfinal at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury. Kent finished the group stage with the second place on the points table in South group while Lancashire was third in the North group.

The first quarterfinal was a low-scoring one with Kent ending up on the losing side. They didn’t reach the expectations with the bat and posted a far below par total on the board. It was too much of an asking for the bowlers to defend the total down as Lancashire chased the target down with six wickets to spare. Matthew Parkinson, who picked 3 wickets in the game was adjudged the ‘Man of the Match’.

Kent fail to do the job with the bat

After winning the toss, Kent’s skipper Sam Billings opted to bat first. However, this decision didn’t work out much in his teams’ favour. Bell-Drummond, who was in some great form this season was run out early in the innings without even facing a ball. The other opener, Joe Denly also couldn’t get amongst the runs as he was dismissed for 13 runs. Further, having lost the wicket of Heino Kuhn as well, the onus was on Sam Billings to take his team to a respectable total.

However, the skipper didn’t get much of support from the other batsmen. Billings kept losing partners at the other end and hence, this hindered his scoring rates. He scored 37 off 37 balls before he was clean bowled by Zahir Khan. Aussie cricketer Marcus Stonis got out for a duck in this encounter. Although Imran Qayyum put his best foot forward and scored 21 off 14 towards the end, it wasn’t really sufficient as Kent could only get to 133 runs in 20 overs for the loss of 9 wickets.

Keaton Jennings guides Lancashire to the semis

Chasing this minimal target, Lancashire had to deal with big blows early in the innings. Jos Buttler joined the team for this match with a little break before the fourth Test against India. However, he got out for a first ball duck. Soon, Alex Davies and Arron Lilley were also dismissed for 15 and 9 runs respectively. After this little collapse, Keaton Jennings and skipper Dane Vilas built a good partnership.

These two played some cautious cricket as the asking rate was never a matter of concern. Jennings got out after he scored 46 off 40 balls while Vilas was unbeaten on 30 off 24 balls. Jordan Clark, with 29 off 18 balls at the end finished things off for his team with 8 balls left. With a win here, Lancashire will now progress to the semifinals of the tournament.

Brief Scores:

KENT: 133/9 in 20 overs (Sam Billings 37, Imram Qayyum 21*, Matthew Parkinson 3/27)

LANCS: 134/4 in 18.4 overs (Keaton Jennings 46, Dane Vilas 30*, Imran Qayyum 2/17)

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