Marchant de Lange makes Hundred history as Southern Brave’s debut ends in defeat at Trent Rockets

Hampshire overseas player D’Arcy Short and England star Dawid Malan made unbeaten half-centuries as Trent Rockets eased to a comfortable victory over Brave as a crowd just short of 13,000 enjoyed Trent Bridge’s first taste of The Hundred.

Malan’s 62 off 43 balls and Short’s 51 off 41 saw the Rockets knock off a modest target of 127 with nine wickets and 18 deliveries to spare, writes JON CULLEY.

That was after the powerful De Lange had shown that raw pace can still be a potent weapon in short-format cricket, finishing with 5-20 from 20 deliveries.

Ross Whiteley top-scored with 39 for the Brave, but with no other batter passing 21 their total always looked inadequate on a good surface.

Having chosen to bat first, Brave struggled to 56-4 at halfway, having lost skipper James Vince for a duck to a superb Luke Wood yorker.

Davies hit Lewis Gregory straight to extra cover and after off-spinner Joe Root had pinned them down by conceding only seven runs from 10 balls, Brave’s top order fell apart as De Lange dismissed three batters in the space of eight deliveries.

Delroy Rawlins was caught at short cover and Hampshire overseas allrounder Colin de Grandhomme (4) bowled round his legs in De Lange’s first set of five, the South African returning to have Conway caught behind. When Root then bowled Liam Dawson (5), the Brave were in trouble at 71-6 from 65.

Whiteley fought back with sixes off Rashid Khan and Wood before twice driving the Afghanistan leg spinner for four down the ground. But De Lange returned to pick up two more wickets in his last five as Chris Jordan was caught on the hook and George Garton bowled making room.

In an eventful start to the Rockets’ chase, Garton opened with a freakish beamer to Short, but the left-armer recovered to clean up local favourite Alex Hales for a first-ball duck.

By contrast, the rest of the innings was drama-free. At halfway, Rockets were 68 without further loss, needing 59 from 50 balls, which meant Malan and Short, who the previous weekend had smashed the fastest T20 half-century in Hampshire’s history off just 18 balls, could be content to deal in singles and not chase risky boundaries.

Nonetheless, the balls that deserved to be hit were duly hit, Malan celebrating his fifty with an uppercut six off Jordan. The end came when Short - who was twice caught off free hits early in his innings - launched the 81st ball over the long-on boundary off Dawson before stroking the next into the covers for the winning run.

De Lange said: ‘The top wicket takers in the short formats are normally spinners and slower bowlers but I feel like there is a time and a place for express pace.

‘I tried to keep it simple and just do the basics well and it was a pitch that helped me today.

‘It was quite a comfortable win in the end. The batters did really well in assessing the wicket as time went on through the innings. You’ve actually got more time than you think. We’ve got a solid team and we gelled together pretty well for the first time out.

Brave’s top scorer, Whiteley, remarked: ‘De Lange is quite an aggressive bowler and he hit the deck pretty hard and used his yorker well towards the end. He is a class act.

‘Losing a couple of wickets in the Powerplay is always tough. We tried to rebuild through the middle but kept losing wickets at crucial times and were probably 25 or 30 short.

‘I’m not sure anyone knows what a good score is in this format yet and it is going to take a while to get used to it.

‘We’ve got used to seeing over-rate on the scoreboard and that’s not there any more, so we need to be quite good with our numbers to work out where we are and that will take a bit of adapting to. But that’s part and parcel of it, something we’ll have to do a little bit better at in future games.’

Brave return to action against Welsh Fire in Cardiff on Tuesday.