Alex Hales warmed up for a late stint in the Indian Premier League with a blistering 86 from 43 balls, a knock that included a run of six successive sixes, in the competition that the ECB hopes will one day rival the IPL as the pre-eminent Twenty20 tournament in world cricket. The Nottinghamshire opener joins the Mumbai Indians for what could be a one-match spell this weekend having played a crucial role in ensuring that the Birmingham Bears, the reigning champions AKA Warwickshire, began their defence in losing fashion.
With the future of this competition one of a plethora of items in Colin Graves’ in-tray as he takes over as chairman of the ECB, this feels an important season for the T20 Blast in its current predominantly Friday night and multi-month format. The Blast may not yet ape Australia’s Big Bash League in its scheduling – the BBL is compact enough to take place in the school holidays – or the IPL in its star-power, but there was plenty of the familiar razzmatazz that accompanies the shortest form of the game.
T-shirt cannons, trampolines, a countdown clock and, in more ways than one, pre-match pyro warmed up a healthy if not heaving crowd of 10,118 at Trent Bridge. Warwickshire, though, were caught cold. They were put in by the Nottinghamshire and most recent England ODI captain James Taylor and suffered a miserable start. Will Porterfield was caught by Taylor at backward point off the bowling of Jake Ball for a seven-ball one and the debutant Tom Lewis was clean-bowled by Harry Gurney to leave Warwickshire eight for two after three overs.
Fortunately for the visitors Varun Chopra was around to stitch the innings together. While wickets continued to fall regularly at the other end – Tim Ambrose, Rikki Clarke and Laurie Evans to the hugely impressive Luke Fletcher, who earlier in the day had signed for Surrey on a month’s loan, though he will still be available to play for Notts in this competition – the Warwickshire captain set about making 80 from 61 balls before being run out from the penultimate delivery of the innings. Evans, who made a vital batting contribution to his side’s win over Lancashire in last year’s final, had chipped in with 35 and Ambrose with 20 from 13 balls, but the rest of the scorecard had a worryingly binary look to it.
Chopra’s knock – the highlight of which was a remarkable reverse-sweep for four off Ball played with the back of the bat – helped his side to 141 for seven, a total that looked 20 or 30 runs short of par from the moment Riki Wessels guided the opening two balls of the Nottinghamshire reply to the boundary.
Wessels rattled on to 30 from 16 balls before whipping Clarke straight to Lewis at square leg. That departure, though, just created more airtime for the Hales show. With Nottinghamshire always ahead of the required rate the opener eased his way to 38 from a relatively sedate 31 balls before breaking loose in the middle of the 12th over.
The first three sixes – courtesy of an on drive and two mows into the leg side – ended Boyd Rankin’s over. The next three – again bludgeoned to leg – came off Ateeq Javid. Then came a single, before Keith Barker was dumped into the stands in the next over. By the time Nottinghamshire had reached their target – with 39 balls to spare – Hales had scored a further 48 from 12 deliveries.
Hales, desperately underused by England in the 50-over World Cup earlier this year, now joins up with the Mumbai franchise for their final group game and possibly the knockout stages, should the Indians progress. With the IPL final on 24 May, the 26-year-old will miss at most one County Championship game and one T20 Blast game for Nottinghamshire.
“The IPL opportunity was too good to turn down,” said Hales. “I’ve been itching to get over there for a couple of years now and I think it can only develop my game further. It was a joint decision with Notts but it was a pretty easy one for me. I’ve got to get over there at some point and it’ll be a great experience playing with some of the best players in the world in T20, so it can only do me good.”
