Stunning turnaround against Superchargers as Stokes drops a match-turning clanger
Trent Rockets 134 for 8 (Hales 40*) beat Northern Superchargers 132 (Simpson 42, Brook 38, de Lange 3-22, Rashid Khan 3-31) by two wickets
Chasing a sub-par target of 133, Trent Rockets’ chase had been rocked by back-to-back ducks for Dawid Malan and Joe Root, each of them extracted by their Yorkshire and England team-mate Adil Rashid in a sensational start to his spell, and after slumping to 58 for 6 after 58 balls of their chase, their prospects of a revival at once stage dipped as low as 2 percent, according to the tournament’s Win Predictor.
From his 26th delivery, bowled by Rashid, Hales worked a single to mid-off to give up the strike, only for the delivery to be called dead ball due to an intruder on the field. After a lengthy period of remonstration, the ball was served up again, and Hales climbed into a full-blooded drive down the ground to long-off … where Stokes, right back on the boundary and perhaps still mindful of his still-problematic broken finger, spilled the chance clean over the rope for six.
One ball later, Hales carved Rashid through point to ignite his innings in a more conventional fashion, and though Luke Wood was prised out by Mujeeb Ur Rahman three balls later, the mood among a 11,483-strong crowd had been transformed. Matt Carter, a late inclusion after a Covid outbreak caused Steven Mullaney to miss the match due to self-isolation, backed up a fine bowling display with vital boundary-finding levers, before Hales sealed the chase in a riot of late strokeplay, including a vast winning six, high into the stands at square leg, to finish unbeaten on 40 from 34.
Full report to follow
Andrew Miller is UK editor of ESPNcricinfo. @miller_cricket