Skipper Phil Mustard won the toss and invited Leicestershire Foxes to bowl first. They struggled to break the opening pair and Mustard went on to pass the fifty mark before he was dismissed. Ross Taylor came in and took full advantage of the Foxes attack, hitting nine sixes and four boundaries as he played his way into the Durham record books, scoring the highest total by an individual player in a t20 innings.
Dale Benkenstein joined Taylor to put on a second hundred stand, another first for the Dynamos and with a flurry of huge hits the Dynamos posted their highest t20 total in the history of the competition, 225.
The Foxes managed to bat at ten an over to begin with, keeping themselves close to the Dynamos comparative total form their innings, but they lost early wickets with Mitchell Claydon dismissing Hodge and Ben Harmison claiming the wickets of du Toit and Jefferson. Bowling figures of 4-13 off 2.2 overs from the returning Paul Collingwood helped seal the Foxes fate. They were all out for 154 with 2.4 overs to spare.
Taylor, for his 80* and two catches, was named Man of the Match at the close of play and he spoke to durhamccc.co.uk “ I didn’t score many in my first game here so it was nice to come back out and hit some runs in front of our supporters. I’m here for cricket and I want to do the club proud.
“I hope I can adapt to all forms of the game, whatever I’m doing, today there were a few balls that I was lucky with and others came off the middle. I’m a twenty20 cricketer, it’s all about entertainment and having fun and if the players and spectators get that then that’s the main thing.
“Phil and Blackie set a great platform for me and Dale to go out and help push us to a really decent score. If we’d lost that game we would have lost a little bit of momentum but picking up five points in the last four games, we’ll take that.”
Durham captain Phil Mustard also had a few words for us, “Our performance was unbelievable – everybody played their part in the game. I’ve been hitting it well in the nets but not had the luck in the last few games so it was good for me to go out and get a good score.
“Our target at the start of the competition was to break our records and if we can keep doing that we’ll move forward in the competition.
“We’ve played the most games in the table and second in the table at the minute with a pretty healthy run rate so hopefully we can carry on and get another win on Friday.”
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