Dave Allen: 20 Years Of Somerset At The Ageas Bowl

Our most recent meeting with Somerset was sadly one of those proverbial ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory games’ in last year’s semi-final at Edgbaston and it left our overall record against them as seven victories against 13 defeats, with one tie and one rained-off no result.

Like the other western counties Glamorgan and Gloucestershire, who we also play this year, we did not meet Somerset in the T20 until 2010 and then played them three times in a season, including a rather special day at the Rose Bowl when we won our first T20 Final on the last ball. We had already played them at home that year and our first meeting was one of our most bizarre T20 matches. The pitch was not a typical white ball surface to say the least, with Somerset reaching just 104-7 in their 20 overs (Ervine 4-0-10-2) after which Jimmy Adams scored 61 which should have been a winning contribution except that no one else made double figures and we lost by seven runs added to which we suffered the further indignity of a points fine the following season. We lost at Taunton that year also but it was third time lucky in the Final.

A half-century from Michael Lumb and 3-19 from ‘Dimi’ led us to victory at home by seven wickets in the first T20 match of 2011 and we also met them in our last game when we lost our ‘super over’ eliminator in the semi-final. After beating them in the 2012 semi-final at Cardiff we had a break from each other until 2014, when their 155-4 (Kieswetter 60) was far too good for us; from 41-6, we scrambled our way to 116 all out. In 2015 at home, Waller took 3-17 but 57 from Michael Carberry plus 4-37 by Yasir Arafat took us to a close victory by just six runs on our way to another Finals Day, where we lost the semi-final to Lancashire.

2016 was not a successful T20 year for us, although one of our three victories came when we beat Somerset at home by 83 runs, with Tom Alsop scoring 85 and Liam Dawson taking 5-17. Dawson’s figures are the third best in any T20 match for Hampshire, while Alsop’s innings remains our highest score v Somerset. By contrast, in 2017 at the The Ageas Bowl we suffered our heaviest runs defeat against them, with their 189-3 (Trego 84*) beating our 91 all out, of which Alsop made 36. It was our ever lowest ever total against Somerset and third lowest in all T20 matches. Despite those two defeats we were at Finals Day again, losing the semi-final to Nottinghamshire.

In 2018 Somerset won both matches with our former batter Johannes Myburgh (54) leading their successful chase of just 130 to win by six wickets at the The Ageas Bowl. In 2019, Babar Azam hit 95* at Taunton and was even better at the The Ageas Bowl reaching his century and putting his side well ahead on 202-4 – rain came eventually to put us out of our misery at 69-6, Somerset winning on the D/L method. We were scheduled to play them in 2020 until the pandemic intervened, while in 2021 Scott Currie (4-24) and half-centuries from McManus and Weatherley gave us a huge victory at home – but they took their revenge at Edgbaston.