Live scores etc link https://live.nvplay.com/ecb/?tab=m_summary#m10a69d7a-a16e-455e-ab01-851d48af42e6

Good to see Kai Smith is back in the side.

The boundary is outrageous.

Barnard plinked one for six

I started watching on the sixth ball hence missed that Barnard six. But did they both get seduced that short boundary in the second over?

Not enough for me. I think 120 was minimum but who knows with one of these.

Burgess and Rhodes both in for a while but neither got going.

Also northants missed the cut off by two minutes, after it got pushed back by a minute, and got no punishment.

More than enough.....Good win!

A good win, I didn’t think we had enough either but comfortable in the end! I think that pretty much guarantees us top spot in the group, barring a big NRR swing?

I thought we'd need 120 but seemed to be one of those pitches that gets harder to score on. I didn't see most of our innings but the ability of our bowlers to hit that blue line on the off side at yorker length was the difference. Miles, OHD, Brooks and Barnard all did very well at that with only a few misses for wides.

We've been excellent in white ball cricket all season, fingers crossed we get over the line this time round.

Yeah what do we all know.

Hardly anyone seemed to be able to score on that, which makes Barnard's innings seem especially good in hindsight.

Our bowling plans were exactly right. Full and wide outside off away from the short boundary for when it was leg side. Short when the short boundary was offside.

What a great format they've landed on too. A fortnight of this and put the rest of the season back together again properly would suit down to a tee and definitely piss all over the 'variant format' the ECB came up with

Think it was definitely harder to bat on than first appeared.

Think Barnard was smart and benefitted from the “powerplay” in that he was able to not have to smack it and just lift it over the fielders.

The difference in the batting was that Burgess and Rhodes kept the scoreboard ticking over, and building the score. Whereas they threw their hands at everything and lost wickets or couldn’t score.

Excellent work by the groundstaff to get the game on.

Match was a bit of a farce but glad we came out on top. I was surprised we didn't use a spinner after Kerrigan had success, but our seamers bowled great lines to them. I thought the umpires called a few harsh wides against OHD and Brookes.
Fingers crossed for a home semi final.

Delighted with the result and qualification but do we really think that staging a game at this level with such a ridiculously short boundary on one side does us any credit. This all feeds into the outground discussion elsewhere.

There's simply to great a volume of cricket being played on the square now for Gary Barwell and the team to cope with. Surely we should be alleviating the pressure on them by considering taking a couple of games on the road.

To me it appears farcical to see boundary riders fielding next to the square leg umpire.

It bought some very different facets to the game but still needed good cricket skills to win there, which Warks brought. So I don't think it was totally farcical. A bowl-off, a coin toss or a game of tiddlywinks I think would have been farcical.

Anyhow. I was looking at the table last night and I think it's only run rate that is standing is standing between us and top spot. Which adds uncertainty as I'm not sure what sort of spanking we'd need to have at the hands of Sussex and Durham not to get that home semifinal.

Home semi really looks odds on now, not that home fixtures appear to give us any sort of advantage as we have seen in T20 and other knockout formats over the years. Surprised at Northants slow start and Vasconcelos and Gay took up almost half the balls (28) in making 16 but some of the bowling was really accurate so well done to them for not getting panicky and spraying it everywhere.

My colleague Graham Smith has done a good summary of the current state of play in the competition:
https://deepextracover.com/2023/08/top-three-places-becoming-clearer-in-both-groups-of-the-metro-bank-one-day-cup/

Of course, if yesterday's game had been scheduled for an outground, there would have been no play and the club would only have a single point for an ababndoned game, putting qualifycation for the play off stage at risk.

Highveld wrote:

Of course, if yesterday's game had been scheduled for an outground, there would have been no play and the club would only have a single point for an ababndoned game, putting qualifycation for the play off stage at risk.

Not necessarily by any means - the showers that went through that delayed the start were very localised and so almost certainly wouldn’t have impacted an outground.