Durham Dynamos beat Derbyshire Falcons by eight wickets with 17 deliveries to spare at Emiartes Durham ICG on Wednesday night.
Derbyshire Falcons won the toss and elected to bat first hoping for revenge on the defeat the Dynamos inflicted on them last week. But, the Falcons got off to a shaky start with Ross Whitely and Wes Durston both out within 4 overs to leave the score at 17-2.
However, Usman Khawaja and captain Wayne Madsen steadied the innings for Derbyshire, leading them to a score of 69-2 before Gareth Breese came into the attack and took the crucial wicket of Khawaja.
The wickets came thick and fast as far as Durham were concerned after that and with five overs remaining Derbyshire were 82-5.
Despite a costly sixteenth over the Dynamos bowlers did well to keep the score down whilst taking wickets on the way, leaving Derbyshire with a final total of 131-7.
Khawaja was the top scorer with 33 and Scott Borthwick the leading bowler with 2 wickets for 23 runs.
Durham got off to a terrific start chasing a total similar to that which they were set last week, Phil Mustard and Herschelle Gibbs taking the Dynamos to a score of 70 without loss, before Mustard was stumped with 25 runs to his name.
Gibbs and Benkenstein maintained Durham’s good spell and led the Dynamos to 87 after 12 over’s before the captain was caught in the field for 7.
Herschelle Gibbs and Johann Myburgh then drove the Dynamos home with 8 wickets in hand after 17.1. Gibbs was the top performer for the Dynamos finishing on 83*, recording the highest individual score in Dynamos t20 history.
At the close of play Herschelle Gibbs said, “I think the bowlers won it in the first ten overs for us. It’s a good deck and despite the rain and humidity of the last few days it played well. You have to give credit to the bowlers and then me and the Colonel set the tone with the bat so it was a good clinical performance today.
“As far as targets go, if you target two fifty run partnership s or one of seventy or eighty and then you are going to be in with a shout 90% of the time. We did that today and we got a result.”