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NatWest T20 Blast: Batting stars, bowling heroes and quirky stats!

Darren Stevens - has hit the most sixes in English T20 competition
Image: Darren Stevens - has hit the most sixes in English T20 competition

Sky Sports Cricket's statistician Benedict Bermange brings you the headline stats and quirky facts about the English domestic T20 competition, which is now in its 13th edition...

The NatWest T20 Blast rolls into town for the summer – the 13th season of the English domestic Twenty20 competition, the pioneering tournament which set the whole snowball rolling back in 2003.

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The Natwest T20 blast is back on Sky Sports

The format is exactly the same as last year – two groups of nine teams each – split geographically North and South with the top four teams from each group qualifying for the quarter-finals. Finals Day is at Edgbaston on Saturday 29 August, with the home side Birmingham Bears seeking to defend their title.

Overall, 87 out of 126 group matches in the NatWest T20 Blast competition will be staged on Friday nights with the majority of counties set to play five matches in this time slot as part of ECB’s wider goal to provide regular ‘appointments to view’ for fans.

Subject to fitness, England players will be available to their counties for the eight NatWest T20 Blast matches scheduled to be played on Friday June 5.

Batting Stars…

So as the competition enters its teenage years, let’s see who the major performers have been over the 12 seasons so far.

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Four men have passed 2,500 runs in the competition, led by Darren Stevens, who has 2,827. The others in that exclusive club are Phil Mustard, Murray Goodwin and Mark Pettini. At the other end of the spectrum, 15 men have scored a solitary run, including internationals Ed Giddins and Umar Gul.

In total 57 centuries have been scored, with two men managing to score three centuries apiece. First was Ian Harvey with 100no for Gloucestershire against Warwickshire in 2003, 108no for Yorkshire against Lancashire in 2004 and 109 for Yorkshire against Derbyshire in 2005. Sussex’s Luke Wright joined him by scoring 103 against Kent in 2007 and then 116no against Hampshire and 153no against Essex in successive innings in 2014.

Surrey’s Steve Davies is still the only player to score 99 in the competition. He was 99 not out against Sussex at Whitgift School in 2011 when Surrey’s 20 overs ended. His side ran out winners by 18 runs but Davies is still yet to score a Twenty20 century.

Bowling Heroes…

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With the ball it is a two-way battle to be the top dog. Both Yasir Arafat and Azhar Mahmood start the 2015 season with 136 wickets each. The other bowlers with more than 100 are Alfonso Thomas, Richard Pyrah and Samit Patel.

There have been 17 hat-tricks in the competition, the most recent achieved by Jeetan Patel last year for Birmingham Bears against Yorkshire at Leeds. Jim Allenby made history by taking four wickets in four balls in 2008 playing for Leicestershire against Lancashire.

Only two sides have topped 250 in the competition, the highest score being Gloucestershire’s 254-3 against Middlesex at Uxbridge in 2011, an innings in which both the openers – Kevin O’Brien and Hamish Marshall – made centuries. At the other end of the spectrum, Northamptonshire were bowled out for just 47 by Durham in 2011 at Chester-le-Street.

Both semi-finals at Final’s Day in 2011 at Edgbaston went to a Super Over. Astonishingly, both meetings between Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire ended tied in 2010.

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Here are some more QUIRKY FACTS from the 12 years so far:

- Derbyshire and Worcestershire remain the only counties never to have appeared at Finals Day

- Somerset’s victory over Essex at Chelmsford in 2011 was by 143 runs – a competition record

- 16 matches have been won by just one run and there have been seven victories by just one wicket.

- Yorkshire’s team which faced Leicestershire at Leicester in 2013 is the only one in the competition’s history to have an average age of less than 23

- Glamorgan’s team which faced Gloucestershire at Cardiff the same year is the only one in the competition’s history to have an average of more than 32

- Lancashire scored more than 200 in three successive matches in 2005

- The run rate in the 2005 competition was 8.35 – the highest ever. 2014 is next best with 8.22 runs per over. 2009 saw only 7.66 runs per over scored

- Craig Kieswetter made six successive scores of fifty or more spanning the 2013 and 2014 seasons

- Azhar Mahmood has been involved in 23 run-outs. He was the victim on seven occasions with his partners dismissed on the other 16 occasions.

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- Darren Stevens has hit the most sixes – 122.  He is the only player to have cleared the boundary more than a hundred times, with Owais Shah next with 94.

- Uniquely, Mark Cleary top-scored with 24 not out batting at No 11 for Leicestershire against Durham at Leicester in 2004

- Jim Allenby has scored fifties against 12 different counties with Darren Maddy and Will Porterfield managing 10 apiece

- In 2010 Alfonso Thomas had a run of six successive matches in which he took three wickets

- Gareth Batty has dismissed 12 batsmen caught and bowled to lead all bowlers in that category

- Last year, Hampshire’s Brad Taylor became the youngest player in the competition’s history aged 17 years 70 days

- Robert Croft is the oldest player, aged 42 years 44 days when he played for Glamorgan against Warwickshire at Birmingham in 2012

- In 2014 both James Vince of Hampshire and James Taylor of Nottinghamshire captained their sides while they were the youngest player in the side!

Who knows what records will be set in the weeks to follow, but one thing is for sure – you’ll see it all live on Sky Sports

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