Essex 148 for 6 (Westley 36, Bopara 36*) beat Worcestershire 145 for 9 (Harmer 3-16) by four wickets
Eight hours earlier, Wayne Parnell had successfully defended Notts' requirement of a single off the final ball to take Worcestershire into the final of the Vitality Blast. Now, at the end of English cricket's longest day, with Edgbaston once again a sea of delirium, he had to do it again. This time Simon Harmer beat the off-side field and Essex had seen off the defending champions to win the tournament for the first time.
It was fitting that Harmer had the last word. In Essex's semi-final stroll against Derbyshire and this narrowest of victories, he returned the combined figures of 7 for 35, the best ever recorded on T20 Finals Day and furthering his claim to be the finest offspinner in the world. He was perfectly served by a surface that turned substantially throughout the day and perhaps, just perhaps, gave Essex's batsmen a little added zip with a hint of dew in the closing overs.
"It's a lottery," decry the critics of Twenty20. Don't tell that to Worcestershire. In successive seasons, their nerveless, intelligent cricket under the brilliant stewardship of Moeen Ali (is there a better captain in the country?) had made them the most resilient side in the land. They had defended 147 against Notts; now it was 145. But this time they had to reckon with Ravi Bopara.
For much of the climax to this riveting final, it had felt like Bopara versus Worcestershire, and for his most zealous admirers (and there are many) Bopara versus The World. County cricket's most reluctant finisher, who has gently carped all summer long about batting at No 6, fashioned a super-cool 36 from 22 balls to hold together an Essex chase that, when they lost their fifth wicket at 82, needing 64 from 41, was so patently down to him.
This was Essex's fifth Finals Day appearance and the first time they had won a semi-final. With two wins from their first 10 in the South Group it has been win-or-bust ever since and Bopara has been at the heart of it. "It's the one trophy I don't have in my cabinet and we finally have it," he said. He has been trying since a T20 debut, batting at No 9, against Surrey at East Molesey in 2003. His international career ended in 2015 just as England adopted a new approach to limited-overs cricket and that his reputation was tarnished by association with their previous failings is his misfortune.
Bopara's six over long off from Moeen's penultimate ball was a key moment, leaving Essex 39 short with four overs left. He then clattered Pat Brown's slower ball over midwicket as that rate fell to 23 from two.
When Brown bowled Paul Walter, Essex were still 17 short with eight balls left. Harmer drove Brown down the ground to cut the last-over requirement to 12 - but 11 for the tie, and victory by virtue of losing fewer wickets, was likely to be enough. Parnell had to dash to retrieve a ball off his own bowling and looked so spent that he had to tie his shoelaces to regain his breath. Harmer drilled him down the ground to reduce the trophy-winning requirement to one off the final ball. Parnell looked distraught, mind and body rebelling. Moeen offered calming words but to no avail. Harmer whistled the final shot to the cover boundary.
Essex's Powerplay had yielded only 36 for the loss of Cameron Delport, who was strangely subdued in making a single off seven balls in an innings that came to grief when he clipped Parnell to backward square. Adam Wheater, a No 5 all season, came in at three, and no doubt to orders provided a decorous run-a-ball 15 until he was bowled attempting a reverse lap at Daryl Mitchell. Essex appeared composed enough at 63 for 2 at midway, with 83 needed from the second half of the innings, but Moeen had retained nine overs from himself, Parnell and Brown for the second half of the innings.
The strength of Worcestershire's batting line-up, one that seems full of bit parts from as high as No 4, is that it finds a way. And, in making 145 for 8, it appeared to have found a way again. Once again it was Harmer who caused the damage. He followed his 4 for 19 against Derbyshire in the semi-final with 3 for 16, a comparable return despite the sense that Worcestershire were playing him with rather more nous.
Moeen and Riki Wessels provided the substance with a second-wicket stand of 56 in 48 balls. Moeen's presence was enough to persuade Harmer not to bowl in the Powerplay, as he had in the semi-final, Sam Cook's pace was as unthreatening as that of Jamie Porter, who had been preferred to him in the semi.
Harmer intervened with wickets in successive balls at the start of his second over. Moeen's first boundary had been an uppish slice against Lawrence through backward point, but he smoothed his way to 32 in 26 balls with another exercise in cricketing meditation.
But Harmer's turn defeated his work to leg whereupon the bowler, one of the best slippers in the country, plunged forward to hold an excellent low catch. Ben Cox, who had guided Worcestershire to the trophy a year ago, was lbw next ball as he tried to sweep, but even the president of the Respect for Umpires Association would have deemed this a terrible decision, because Cox was well outside the line and got a big inside-edge on the ball too.
Parnell fell to Harmer's penultimate ball, bowled by a faster arm-ball, and at 90 for 4 with the 14th over about to begin, Worcestershire promoted Mitchell above Whiteley. In Western terms, the peace-loving sheriff had been preferred to the local gunslinger, and Mitchell duly provided a cautious 19 from 15 balls to edge Worcestershire to a realistic total.
Wessels was a figure of realism, too, with 31 from 34 balls;. Once a square-of-the-wicket adventurer, he still has those qualities but increasingly in this Worcestershire side, a successful side at that, he finds himself pushing singles to hold the innings together. It might have been enough. Instead, he became a support act in a wonderfully entertaining day.
