Durham Jets (151/4; Mustard 46) beat Lancashire Lightning (149/8; Guptill 72; McCarthy 3/23, Arshad 3/30) by six wickets.
Durham Jets secured their first victory of the 2016 Natwest T20 Blast with a resounding victory over last year’s champions at Old Trafford on Friday night.
New Zealand star Martin Guptill hit 72 off 46 balls for the hosts on his debut, but the rest of his team mates failed to match his heroic efforts with the bat.
Phil Mustard responded with a scintillating batting performance himself by hitting 46 runs from 18 balls, which saw him become only the second batsman to surpass 3,000 domestic T20 runs in England.
Mark Stoneman won the toss and elected to field as both sides chased their first T20 victories of the season.
Guptill started quickly, but Usman Arshad began to put the hosts under pressure as he got two wickets in two deliveries to dismiss Alviro Petersen and Karl Brown.
Arshad got his third 12 balls later as he removed danger man Jos Buttler, thanks to the safe hands of Paul Collingwood.
It was looking as thought The Jets were going to be chasing a large total as Lancashire Lightning reached 79-3 at the half way stage, with some big hitters still to enter the crease.
But the wicket of Guptill, along with some fine bowling in the second half of the innings, which saw Barry McCarthy join Arshad on three wickets, restricted Lancashire to 149-8 from their 20 overs.
Durham started rapidly as Mustard hit 23 from Arron Lilley’s opening over. The second over went for another 20 from Kyle Jarvis , before Mark Stoneman (13) was dismissed with the first ball of the third over as he was caught at third man.
The visiting side weren’t to be knocked despite their captain’s dismissal, as Graham Clark hit his first delivery for four.
Mustard went soon after as his leading edge was held by Guptill, but Clark picked up where he left off with a number of boundaries as he put Durham on 107-2 at the midway point of their innings.
Clark (36) was caught soon after from Neil Wagner’s bowling and Ryan Pringle (9) soon followed him back to the pavilion.
However, Michael Richardson (34*) and Keaton Jennings (6*) saw Durham across the line as Richardson hit the winning runs with his third four.
The win sees Durham Jets move up to fifth in the table, and sees Lancashire Lightning rooted to the foot of the ladder.
By Jordan Brown