From The Archive: T20 Quarter-Finals

It is perhaps surprising to realise that next season will be the 20^th since Hampshire launched the new T20 competition with a home win against Sussex. Despite that promising start, we enjoyed relatively little success over the first seven seasons (2003-2009) with just two defeats in quarter finals.

In the first, in 2004, they were hammered by Lancashire at the Rose Bowl – in one of only two appearances for Hampshire in that competition Shane Warne could find no magic, Lancashire winning by nine wickets with 21 balls to spare.

In 2009 we beat Sussex in a Lord’s Final and five days later went to Northampton seeking our first visit to Finals Day. The scheduled day was washed out and on the next we restricted Northants to 134-6 (Sean Ervine 2-8) but wickets fell regularly, and when ‘Dimi’ Mascarenhas was dismissed for 36 we fell to a 13-run defeat.

If these were disappointments, we then embarked on a remarkable spell of quarter-final appearances. In 2010 youngsters Danny Briggs (3-29) and James Vince (66*) led us to victory at Edgbaston and of course we won the Final back on our home ground.

In 2011 we posted 154-6 against Durham and bowled them out for 99 although we lost the semi-final to Somerset on a (not so) ‘super over’. Then in 20012 we drew a quarter-final visit to Trent Bridge, as we have this year.

On that occasion, Notts posted a daunting 178-7 (Samit Patel 60 from 33 balls) while we fell to 78-5 before Neil McKenzie with 79* from 49 balls supported by Liam Dawson and ‘Dimi’ Mascarenhas, took us to a target of 12 from the last over – and he saw us home with a four from the last ball! Once again we went to Finals Day (Cardiff) and won the trophy for the second and last time.

By 2013 scores of 200+ were more common but Hampshire’s quarter-final 202-3, built on a century opening partnership from Michael Carberry (100*) and Jimmy Adams (60) made them firm favourites, despite which Lancashire – with no one reaching fifty – failed by just a single to match their score. On Finals Day we lost to Surrey in the semi-final – indeed while we have won two Finals we have never yet progressed beyond a semi-final and then lost.

So it was that in 2014 we went for the second of what will soon be three quarter-final visits to Trent Bridge where we again chased down Notts’ score – this time 197-2 with fifties from Hales, Wessells and Patel, outdone by a brilliant 93* by James Vince – but on Finals Day we fell at the first hurdle to a 59-run defeat by Lancashire.

The 2015 quarter-final was a bizarre affair – a televised evening match on a Worcester ground with no floodlights. Vince again starred with 107* in a total of 196-4 but as the skies darkened there were problems for the batsmen and fielders and with the home side 58-2 in the ninth over, the umpires abandoned play and Hampshire won by 17 Duckworth/Lewis runs. In the semi-final they lost heavily once again to Lancashire.

2016 was a bit of a shock as after seven consecutive quarter-finals we failed to qualify but we were back in 2017 with a trip to Derby where Afridi’s century took us to our record total of 249-8 and when we dismissed the home side for 148 (Dawson 3-28) our record T20 victory margin by runs. This time we met Notts in the semi-final and they had their revenge at Edgbaston, winning by 23 runs – and that was the last time we reached the knock-out stages until this year.