Dom Sibley continued Surrey’s dominance at Utilita Bowl in the Men’s Vitality Blast with a crushing 70 against Hampshire Hawks, helping his side claim a 69-run win.
Former England Test opener Sibley’s breezy 46-ball knock provided the backbone for his side’s commanding victory on the south coast.
This was Surrey’s sixth straight T20 win on the ground, and opening partners Will Jacks and Sam Curran whacked a quick-fire 41 and 38s to back Sibley up as Surrey reached 193.
Despite short explosive cameos from South African duo Dewald Brevis and Lhuan-dre Pretorius, two wickets apiece for the returning Reece Topley, Chris Jordan and Mitchell Santner, and three for 18 for Nathan Smith, gave the visitors a one-sided victory.
“They got an above-par score. They got a good partnership to start, and then they have a lot of depth, so we were under pressure in the back end," said Hampshire head coach Adi Birrell.
“It is tricky when you are chasing a big total, and then you lose three wickets in a row at the back end of the powerplay.
"The new guys have to take chances, and the run-rate is going up, and when it gets beyond 12 runs an over here, it is difficult.
“We lost a lot of wickets in rapid succession, trying to keep up with the rate. It was a bad defeat.
“We are in the pack now, but there are a lot of games left and we could get on a roll. I think we have a good side here, and hopefully we can compete to get into the top four.”
Having been put into bat, Jacks and Sibley seemed to amass runs without massive swings of the bat, with Sibley’s two sixes over midwicket anomalies in a 59-run powerplay.
Jacks’ sweet timing had brought him 41 in a blink-of-an-eye 24 balls, but Benny Howell’s introduction began a squeeze.
Howell and Liam Dawson stopped the flow of runs with their off-pace deliveries, with Howell getting Jack's slapping to point and Jason Roy run out via a one-motion diving run out by James Vince.
Sibley continued to turn over the strike, along with the odd boundary, as he found a tempo and stuck to it, reaching his ninth T20 fifty in 32 balls.
He eventually fell for an impressive 70, but that only began the Surrey fireworks – with 51 runs coming from the last four overs.
Sam Curran baseball-swatted Chris Wood and then swivelled James Fuller for sixes, and when he was out, his brother Tom fired an outrageous six over extra cover.
Pretorius almost monopolised the strike in the first three and a half overs, but when he hit the ball, it stayed hit.
His third ball cleared the ropes with ease, before one of three fours cannoned off the non-strikers’ stumps and into the padding in next to no time.
But Jacks stopped him in his tracks when a reverse sweep went wrong, before Vince – who had only eight balls in 4.5 overs – spliced to mid on.
Dewald Breis blew some life back into the innings with a six straight into a cameraman and then an audacious back-foot hammer for another maximum.
But scoreboard pressure saw more and more desperate rash shots. Brevis, Joe Weatherley, James Fuller, Liam Dawson, Benny Howell, and John Turner all took to the sky, while Chris Wood was castled.
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