Vitality Blast: Essex slump to Vince-powered Hampshire

Vince is now only behind Michael Klinger in Blast hundreds having overtaken Luke Wright in the run charts on Wednesday, and only Wayne Madsen has more than his 280 runs in this year’s competition.

His supreme 103 laid the foundations for a huge 215 target for the Eagles, which Nathan Ellis (3-10), Scott Currie (3-21) and Liam Dawson (4-21) made sure was never chasable.

Defending champions Hampshire eventually won by 118 runs – the Hawks’ highest margin of victory after bowling the hosts out for 96 – with 35 balls to spare to hand Essex their first T20 defeat of the year.

Vince continued from his back-to-back unbeaten 88s, and his record-breaking, by pumping Aron Nijjar for two massive sixes back over his head with his first two balls faced having been asked to bat first.

Ben McDermott was adjudged caught behind while Toby Albert took nine balls to get off the mark but Vince was terrorising the crowd and local residents – his eventual eight sixes threatened the slate and chimneys of the houses at the Hayes Close End.

He monopolised the run-scoring, including 60 of the 101 stand with Albert – who improved his hitting to reach 38 before he was stumped.

Vince was cleanly striking anything that was sent his way and brought up his century with another pulled maximum in 45 balls.

He was furious when he slapped a Matt Critchley long hop to the deep midwicket boundary which began five wickets falling for 35 runs.

Joe Weatherley had made a well-compiled 29 before he was caught at cover to follow Ross Whiteley, Aneurin Donald and James Fuller’s short stays.

But a tame finale was avoided when Liam Dawson slog swept three successive sixes to take 21 off the final over and give Hampshire 214. Daniel Sams was the only bowler not to go at a double figure run-rate for his 3-28, although Simon Harmer also pilfered three wickets.

Essex tried to swing their way to victory but plays and misses dominated, despite Adam Rossington pumping two early sixes before unfortunately been given caught behind after the ball appeared to clip his stump rather than his bat.

Dan Lawrence was lbw after 22 off 14, Feroze Khushi yorked by Dawson, Paul Walter stumped, Robin Das swatted to long off, Tom Westley drilled to cover and Nathan Ellis bowled Harmer. It had been a spell of five wickets in 23 balls for 20 runs.

Dawson pinned Nijjar before Sams gave Vince his third catch of the night and Ellis his third wicket to finish off the comprehensive away victory.

Sams said: “Vince is a world class player and we caught him on one of his nights. He came out hard and put us on the back foot and we weren’t up to scratch.

“A player like him has got a lot of cricket reps under his belt and has complete trust in his game. You saw the sixes he hit, and most of them would have been sixes not just on this ground but a lot of grounds. There was complete trust in his swing.

“You have plenty of players bludgeoning the ball in T20 cricket and then you have classy players like this coming out still smacking sixes and they are the ones who are more consistent.

“I was happy with how I went about things but in the end it looked like there were going to get 250 or something, so any time you can keep a team to 200 on this ground you feel like you are in with a chance but we didn’t get going.

“Rossington’s wicket was unfortunate and Khushi got hit on the arm and couldn’t get going. We stalled a bit and couldn’t build any momentum. We kept losing wickets but I think this is a good learning curve.

“We can think about that total and try and get it in the back end and not try and go so hard so early. We do play like that and we won’t stop taking the positive options but when we get under pressure situations we need to soak it up better

“Tonight is a blip on the radar. In a long tournament you can’t win all of them so this is probably a good time for it.”