Ball one: Dan Lawrence builds towering target in Blackpool

Surrey’s unexpected stumble (a draw last week after their defeat to Lancashire in the previous round) has opened up a real race for the pennant in a competition that had taken on the air of last year’s procession. Equally unexpectedly, the charge is being led by Essex, powered by three wins in three.

Their latest win came in an excellent game at sunny Blackpool, outground cricket once again showing up beautifully on the YouTube stream, provoking pangs of nostalgia for the delights of festival cricket.

Having lost most of the first day to rain, the visitors were in danger of tossing away the advantage of winning the toss, but Tom Westley played a captain’s knock at three and found a partner in Paul Walter, the pair adding 155 for the fifth wicket, the highest stand of the match. Tom Bailey’s six Wickets showed that there was movement off the seam and few are more suited to such pitches than Sam Cook, whose four wickets ensured a lead of 137.

Lancashire had bowled their way back into the match and, late on day three, they would have fancied their chances of chasing 350 or so. Dan Lawrence and Doug Bracewell had other ideas and blitzed 106 in nine overs for the eighth wicket as the wheels came off in the early evening. Reaching 430 was always too much for the win, but home supporters were thrilled by the spirit of the fight, exemplified by Rob Jones’s defiant century. Ten more balls would have secured the draw – Westley’s men left with points but Keaton Jennings’s men left with pride restored.

Ball two: Rob Yates stars in Canterbury tale

Needing a win to arrest their stumbling challenge, Warwickshire’s players must have been pleased to load the “The Spitfire Ground, Canterbury” into their satnavs and set off to Kent.

After the seamers had blown away the home side in 40 overs, Rob Yates, still only 23, dug in, but kept losing partners just as he threatened to drive his side to a matchwinning score. Nevertheless, he knew he had Glenn Maxwell at seven and Michael Burgess at eight (which feels like a cheat code) and the opener was able to go at his own pace for nine hours accumulating 228 runs before Will Rhodes waved him back to the pavilion, 549 for seven on the board (in my mind’s eye, always black on white at that ground).

Kent put up a decent fight for 100 overs, but Chris Rushworth and Oliver Hannon-Dalby have the nous required to make scoreboard pressure count and they added six more wickets to the six they bagged first time round. Warwickshire now trail the leaders by 23 points but they have a game in hand and might yet have a say in the September shake-up.

Ball three: Unexpected thriller ends in draw not a tie

The battle of the basement between Middlesex and Northamptonshire seemed an unlikely candidate for match of the week, but turned out to be in with a shout of match of the season.

With not too much in it after the first innings, Sam Whiteman’s century, supported by Emilio Gay and those two old pros, Luke Proctor and Rob Keogh, set up a final-day chase of 322 for Middlesex in what turned out to be 92 overs.

Thirty years ago, sides would have batted until tea and “had a look”; 10 years ago, sides might have wanted to keep the required rate below 4.5 and then have a pop if the foundation was solid for the last 20 overs; these days, with bat technology and the changing parameters of what constitutes a viable chase, batters fancy their chances.

Not that it looked that way when Stephen Eskanazi, promoted to Bazball it a bit up top, retired with a bashed finger and three wickets down with 238 still to get. But Sam Robson had dropped anchor and was happy for Max Holden, John Simpson and Toby Roland-Jones to play around him as the tension mounted. Proctor cycled through seven bowlers, including himself, looking for the right man to get the job done, but could only find four more wickets.

Red-ball cricket is not white-ball cricket and, if he couldn’t find the bowlers, he could find the fielders to protect the boundaries, easier to do at the Merchant Taylor’s Ground Northwood than at Lord’s with its lengthy perimeter. Roland-Jones had muscled the only three sixes of the innings and Joshua de Caires and Robson could not find the fence in the last 22 balls.

The match finished with the scores level, a draw since a tie requires both sides to be all out too. Middlesex took what might prove a crucial extra three points from the match, as they were batting when time was called, a slightly eccentric rule, but one that makes sense when you think about it.

Ball four: Rain brings no harm to Harmer

At Edgbaston a dire weather forecast kept some fans at home, but the rain was kind in skirting the ground and, with a break or two, Finals Day in the Blast delivered its usual jamboree of great cricket and great fun. I tire of saying so, but other sports would treasure such an event; English cricket’s authorities appear to take a different view.

In the first semi-final, Hampshire were put in by Essex and got off to something of a flyer through Ben McDermott, but were reined in by Shane Snater’s varied medium pace and the crafty spin of Simon Harmer and Matt Critchley – or, perhaps I should say, stalled by Adam Rossington standing up, pinning batters to the crease who were itching to advance. It turned into a day that brought back memories of Jack Russell’s aggressive white-ball wicketkeeping, though Rossington is not quite in that class (who is?)

In the reply to Hampshire’s 170 (which felt a little below par at the time but proved the highest score of the day) Duckworth, Lewis and Stern were soon being waved on with the covers and Essex were set a revised target of 115 off 12, having been 19 for one off 2.5 overs when the rain came.

Nobody doubts that DLS is the fairest way to deal with such situations, but two or three biggish overs were always likely to see Harmer’s side home and that would not have been the case with the full complement of runs to get. With most top sides able to stock power-hitters down to No 9, batting second with rain about seems even more favourable these days, though I’m sure the stats will suggest a little confirmation bias is in play. Harmer himself heaved the winning six and could then relax with his teammates and ponder tactics for the final.

Ball five: Gregory refuses to ring changes as bowlers hold nerve

Have Surrey become a little giddy after their record chase a few weeks ago in the Championship? Even if many of the players involved on Saturday did not play in that famous match, it was easy to understand Mark Butcher’s exasperation on commentary as batter after batter appeared to be under the impression that they were chasing 501 off 19 overs, attempting to smash ball after ball over the fence into a stiffening breeze.

Lewis Gregory’s men had lost wickets regularly en route to setting a target of 143 off 19 overs, but they knew they had an attack that could use conditions to their advantage. It was a classic instance of a first innings that stuck to the old adage: “You can’t win a match batting first, but you can lose it.”

Somerset’s bowling (Craig Overton, Matt Henry, Ish Sodhi and Ben Green) have 50 years of T20 experience between them so, when Surrey tried to bully them with the big shots, they held their nerve, waited for the latest stormy squall to pass and trusted their fielders to hold their catches. It was a masterclass in patience in the service of preying on one’s opponent’s stubbornness.

Ball six: Too few slams for Sams and Somerset win Blast

It was probably right that Somerset, the best team in the tournament, met Essex, the form team in the country across all formats, in the showpiece occasion of the season.

Sean Dickson picked up where he left off in the semi-final, anchoring Somerset’s innings with 53. Tom Banton’s 20 was the next best as batting under lights proved as tricky as ever in England. Shane Snater was excellent with the ball and Simon Harmer was quick to recognise that Paul Walter’s dibbly-dobblers were ideal in the heavy atmosphere, three for 29 his reward.

Essex needed 146, a target they would ordinarily chase down in a group match on a sunny afternoon at Chelmsford. This was, however, a horse of a different colour. After three overs, even Somerset must have had their doubts, the target reduced to not much more than a run-a-ball with nine wickets in hand. But Matt Henry (what a player to be able to call upon) picked up two wickets in the fourth over and the wind went out of the batters’ sails.

It is traditional in such circumstances to say that it’s crucial to get out the batting side’s gun hitter – in this case, Essex’s Australian powerhouse Daniel Sams. But Essex kept taking wickets at the other end, holding catches on a difficult ground to sight the ball making ground on a greasy surface, and targeted the stumps on the age-old principle that “if you miss, I hit”. Sams went into the penultimate over on strike with 21 to get, but only Sam Cook, the No 11, for company.

Hopes of the trophy going east were raised with a six from the first ball, but the feeling persisted that Sams had been standing on the burning deck for so long that there was one with his name on it soon. Tom Kohler-Cadmore took a fine catch to end the resistance and the trophy went west, Somerset deserving winners for the first time since 2005.