Somerset can now proudly claim to be the team to beat in T20 cricket in England having made three finals in a row, winning two of them.<\/p>\n
Following their 2023 victory over Essex<\/a> it was a different story last season as they suffered an eight-wicket thrashing at the hands of Gloucestershire.<\/a><\/p>\n They appeared to be struggling to keep up with the required run-rate of almost 10 per over this time around before Smeed and Dickson turned the game on its head with a fourth-wicket stand of 88.<\/p>\n Smeed and Tom Kohler-Cadmore, who made an outstanding 81 in their semi-final win over Lancashire, had got Somerset off to a lightning start, taking them to 46-0 in the fifth over when Kohler-Cadmore was bowled by Sonny Baker’s rapid yorker.<\/p>\n On a day where 44 sixes were struck, Kohler-Cadmore hit the biggest of them all when he swiped Chris Wood over the Eric Hollies Stand.<\/p>\n But a couple of overs later he was gone as young England paceman Baker yorked him with an 88mph beauty.<\/p>\n At 89-3 in the 10th over, the game was in the balance but Smeed continued to find boundaries, hitting 14 fours and a six in total.<\/p>\n Perhaps the crucial moment came in the 14th over when Scott Currie dropped Dickson on the boundary with the required run-rate above 12 an over.<\/p>\n Smeed chipped Currie to James Vince on the long-off boundary six short of a deserved century to give Hampshire hope before Gregory ended it in the same over with a four and a couple of leg-side sixes.<\/p>\n “The ball seems to fly here especially under the lights and the dew comes in so we always knew we had a chance,” Smeed told BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra.<\/p>\n “It was some proper hitting from Lewis [Gregory] at the end there as well.<\/p>\n “The guys have been unbelievable in the whole competition, different people have stood up in different games. <\/p>\n “I think that’s probably our strength, we’ve got match winners one to 11 and if it’s someone’s day they can get us over the line.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Somerset can now proudly claim to be the team to beat in T20 cricket in England having made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-141141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}