Nottinghamshire’s Director of Cricket has been reflecting on a successful weekend as the Outlaws clinched their third straight victory in the Barbados T20 Cup competition.
Mick Newell had said from the start of the tour that he was targeting another win in the six team competition that also included Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Combined Campuses and Colleges, Hampshire and a Barbados Select XI.
“If you’ve got a competition like this, you give it a good go to try and win it," he said.
“It’s not preparation for our domestic competition back home, which is still two months away and is played in completely different conditions, so we just set out to try and win the competition and we did that very nicely.”
Newell sprang something of a surprise on the eve of the tournament by appointing Riki Wessels as skipper and he admitted to being delighted with how things had gone.
“Riki was terrific,” he said.
“He was very proactive in the field and talked well to the bowlers. Most of the bowling changes were effective and they were frequent and it was good to see that he controlled different fields for different batsmen.
“He’s got that experience now of playing in a global competition, of playing in the Big Bash, so I think he’s got a lot to offer.”
Although some of the personnel may have changed for this tour, it was a tried and trusted formula that served Notts well again, with the seam bowlers sharing the six powerplay overs and then pace taken off the ball immediately afterwards.
“That wasn’t something we talked about prior to the competition, we just let Riki do it how he felt he should do it, but the three different bowlers, two overs each format has served us quite nicely for most of the time in 20 over cricket and it worked quite well over here.”
Amongst a number of successes was Sam Wood who remained undefeated all weekend with scores of 51* and then 30* in the final, again to the delight of Newell.
“It’s important that we find a role within the setup for Sam. He sort of floated around at 7 or 8 in one day cricket last year and didn’t get much opportunity. He got two chances on Sunday and took them both.”
Notts now turn their attention to the final match of the tour, a two-day contest against Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday. Newell is looking for useful time in the middle for the batsmen and overs under their belts for the bowlers.
“We haven’t got an awful lot of batting depth out here when you consider there’s no Hales or Taylor (James) or indeed Brendan Taylor yet and we’re without the injured Libby and Lumb, so we’re a little bit light in that area.
“That makes it important for the likes of Smith, Mullaney, Wessels and Patel to spend some quality time at the crease.
“We’ve got quite a lot of bowling here so we’ll try and share that around. We'll get 90 overs of bowling against Hampshire if the weather's good and that will be a good end to the trip.”
The match is now being played at Isolation Cavaliers Cricket Club at Lakes in St Andrew parish on the eastern side of the island.
“It's a ground we haven’t been to,” said Newell. “Everybody says it’s a lovely setting, so we’re looking forward to going there and performing well.”
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