From The Archive: Hampshire v Somerset

Like Glamorgan – and Gloucestershire, who we only play away this year – we did not meet Somerset in the T20 until 2010 and then played them three times, including a rather special day at the Rose Bowl when we won our first T20 Final on the final 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 – plus the further indignity of a points fine the following season. The return at Taunton was completely the opposite with our best v Somerset of 216-5 (McKenzie 73) not sufficient to prevent another Somerset victory, by six wickets and their highest score against us of 220. It was nonetheless, third time lucky in the Final.

A half-century from Michael Lumb and 3-19 from ‘Dimi’ led us to victory at home in 2011, while Taunton was washed-out, but it was another three-match season with a semi-final meeting at Edgbaston. Shahid Afridi hit 80 in our 138-4 but rain intervened with four overs and one ball remaining. Somerset had a revised D/L target of 95 but ended one run short, so the two sides contested a ‘super over’ which Somerset won easily – still the first couple of years v Somerset had been full of incident and excitement.

The reduced programme in 2012 meant we were not scheduled to meet them again – except we did, when we reached another Finals Day and had our revenge in the semi-final at Cardiff (Mascarenhas 2-11) before going on to beat Yorkshire in the Final, on our way to the season’s white ball ‘double’.

Then we had a break from each other until June 2014, when Somerset won a thriller at Taunton by one run, with Peter Trego hitting one of a number of T20 half-centuries against us; there were also a couple of wickets for our new bowling coach Alfonso Thomas, plus two more when they beat us more easily in the return. In 2015, we posted a respectable 167-3 but could not withstand a Gayle-force assault as the West Indian star hit 85 from 49 balls, but he was missing from The Ageas Bowl and 57 from Michael Carberry plus 4-37 by Yasir Arafat took us to victory 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 at home when we beat Somerset by 83 runs, with Tom Alsop scoring 85 and Liam Dawson taking 5-17. Dawson’s figures are the second best in any T20 match for Hampshire, while Alsop’s innings remains our highest score v Somerset. In 2017, Somerset posted 204-9 at Taunton although we got within 14 of their total, but at home we suffered our heaviest runs defeat against them, with their 189-3 beating our 91 all out. Despite those two defeats we were at Finals Day again, losing the semi-final to Nottinghamshire. Last year was less successful, with Somerset’s 197-7 (Wood 5-32) and 130-4 winning both matches. In the first of those matches Dawson (82) and Vince (74) scored over 85% of our runs, but no one else reached double figures as we lost by 16 runs. Somerset have ten victories, twice as many as Hampshire, although perhaps that Final in 2010 counted double?

Dave Allen