'Gate defeat Dunnington to win Yorkshire T20 title

Harrogate CC 1st XI are the new Yorkshire Premier League North T20 champions after hammering Dunnington by 50 runs at Scarborough yesterday.

Under the wing of new captain Ross Sedgley, 'Gate cruised to the title having seen off Sessay earlier in the day and now go on to represent the Yorkshire North League in the NatWest Club T20 competition.

Following match report by Miles Rawlings

Image by Jimmy Griffin

On a cool cloudy morning the first semi-final of the YPLN 2019 T20 competition between Harrogate & Sessay got underway with Harrogate batting first. Unfortunately both openers were gone with the score on 20 but Josh Atkinson was in good form finding the gaps in the field with good, precise shot selection. Batting with Ross Sedgely they took the score to 61 before Josh was bowled by Langstaff having scored 39 off 26 balls when looking well set.

Ross departed with the score on 79 having scored 12 off 14 balls. Harry Stothard made a typically aggressive 23 off 18 balls, Ishan Abeysakara looked promising but fell for 13 off 9 balls, Cooper Smith batted sensibly for 12 off 11 and Joe Bowman hit a few lusty blows for 12 not out. However, over all the impression was left that we had thrown away a lot of wickets and we had got a total we could win with, but we were going to have to bowl and field well.

Harry Stothard opened the bowling with his left arm spin with a bit more pace than usual. This worked well as he soon had Wilkie smartly stumped by Sedgely for 1. Tom Geeson-Brown opened from the other end and as usual was very economical as the batsmen found him hard to lay a bat on. However, the score progressed to 42 before Hunt miss timed a pull and was caught at mid on by Bowman off Ash Griffin.

Jackson then departed well caught by Ben Stokes at deep square leg sweeping Abeysakara for a well made 38 with the score on 64. Cooper Smith was then introduced to the attack and bowled 2 very accurate overs for the wickets of Kavikara and Hall for only 10 runs. This brought Tom Sowerby to the wicket who for a brief time threatened mayhem with 30 off ten balls before he tried to hit Abeysekara over deep mid on where Ben Kempley held the first of two good catches off successive balls from Abeysekara.

For his hat trick ball he decided to go for the googly which he landed perfectly to clean bowl Atkinson. With the score on 108 for 8 and behind the clock Sessay added only a few more runs to be 113 at the close off their overs. Abeysakara finished with 4 for 12 off his 4 overs. So we did bowl and field very well to secure an excellent win.

The next semi-final was an interesting match between a very young Academy side and Dunnington. The Academy batted first but only made 116 with 28 from Finley Bean and 25 from Dominic Leech. So we thought easy win for Dunnington. Not so, as Leech in a fast and accurate opening spell dismissed both opening batsmen for 0. The contest was very even from then on but Dunnington just prevailed winning by 3 wickets with 2 balls to go.

So to the final between Harrogate and Dunnington. Harrogate lost the toss and were asked to bat first. Unfortunately both openers fell cheaply but Josh Atkinson batted as he had done in the semi-final and with Ross Sedgley also starting to find his touch they took the score to 70 before Sedgley was bowled for 20 off 18.

This brought Harry Stothard to the wicket who immediately looked very confident and it wasn’t long before he was playing his reverse sweep to great effect and achieving amazing power with two huge sixes. He also hit well straight (much to his Chairman’s pleasure) with several more huge sixes landing in the spectator seats in the north stand.

He was well supported by Josh until he was unfortunately run out for 49 off 34 balls. Harry was eventually caught in the outfield for 63 off 32 with the score at 153 for 7 but by then the 3 batsmen to score runs had ensured a total that was going to be difficult to challenge. We eventually finished on 175 all out with 1 ball to go.

Harry and Tom again opened the bowling and kept the scoring rate down to 6 an over as against the requirement of 8.75. Dunnington never got much above this rate and by the 10th over the requirement was 12 an over and Harrogate were in the driving seat. The best bowling figures were from Ben Stokes with 3 for 21 but everyone had again bowled and fielded well with one outstanding catch from Harry who was man of the match.

Congratulations to all the teams who made the finals day; such a good spectacle for the crowd. All the games were as usual played hard but in good spirit. The day was well organised by Kevin Hutchinson and our thanks to Scarborough CC and Paul Harrand and Rob Richtering for hosting the finals day.