Essex Eagles posted their first points of the 2017 NatWest T20 Blast competition when Somerset were defeated by 22 runs at The Cloudfm County Ground on Thursday night.
That success ended back-to-back defeats by Surrey and Kent Spitfires, but the Eagles have an early opportunity to extend their winning run when they entertain Glamorgan at Chelmsford on Sunday with a scheduled start time of 2:30pm.
Head Coach Chris Silverwood has named the same 14-man squad that turned up trumps on Thursday and admitted that he was delighted to get the Eagles’ T20 Blast campaign up and running with the win.
“To register our first win in the competition is satisfying and bounce back after two defeats shows what character we have in our dressing room,” he said.
“It’s never nice to lose, we lost what was a fantastic game against Surrey before we were comprehensively beaten by Kent Spitfires. Since that second defeat, we worked and practiced really hard and got the result we wanted.
“You have to face up to the fact that you are going to lose games of Twenty20 cricket, it’s as simple as that and I accept it but to me, it’s more about the character the lads show.
“If they keep driving forward and practicing as hard as they did in the two days leading up to that Somerset match, then hopefully we’ll win more games than we lose.
“It was a marked improvement on our first couple of matches. I thought that we bowled beautifully against Somerset to defend that total of 170 for 6, there were good contributions from every member of our attack.
“Let’s not forget our batters, obviously Tendo (Ryan ten Doeschate) was outstanding and the guys played well around him. What I did like was the intent we showed right the way through.
“We were good in the field as well, we took some very good catches so overall, I’m pleased but now we have to keep driving all that forward.”
Tickets for this match are sold out with play set to get underway at 2:30pm. Gates will be open from 12:30pm with activities for all the family taking place in the main car park throughout the day.
Essex Eagles squad:
Ryan ten Doeschate (27) Captain
James Foster (7) Wicket-keeper
Mohammad Amir (5)
Ravi Bopara (25)
Varun Chopra (6)
Matt Dixon (30)
Simon Harmer (11)
Dan Lawrence (28)
Jamie Porter (44)
Callum Taylor (67)
Paul Walter (22)
Tom Westley (21)
Adam Wheater (31)
Ashar Zaidi (99)
