Vitality Blast, Utilita Bowl, Southampton
Hampshire 173-6 (20 overs): Dawson 52, Stubbs 36; Mills 2-26
Sussex 144 (17.3 overs): Ward 40, Hughes 31; Dawson 3-20, Wood 2-20
Hampshire beat Sussex by 29 runs
Liam Dawson struck a second successive half-century before a miserly bowling return sent Hampshire Hawks to a fourth straight victory in the T20 Blast men’s competition.
England white-ball all-rounder Dawson followed his 76 against Surrey with an innings-saving 52 to give Hampshire a defendable 173-6.
The left-arm spinner then tied the Sussex Sharks middle-order in knots with 3-20, with Chris Wood and James Fuller each picking up two wickets.
Teenager Manny Lumsden rounded things off to also take two as Hampshire moved four points clear at the summit of the South Group, whereas Sussex remain bottom with a solitary win and three losses in a row.
Everything Sussex captain Tymal Mills touched in the early stages turned to gold, as the visitors started both innings on top.
He won the toss, got every fielding adjustment perfect and got Hawks’ dangerman James Vince out in the second over.
Mills went for just 13 runs in his two powerplay overs, but that was eclipsed by James Coles’ unmovable darts – which went for seven runs and yorked Toby Albert.
Tom Price and Danny Briggs backed those overs up by dismissing Tom Prest and Joe Weatherley – the former to a stunning caught and bowled – as Sussex suppressed the hosts to 42-4 after seven overs.
Dawson’s elevation to number five against Surrey saw him strike his first T20 fifty for three years. Another promotion saw identical results.
He swung his first ball for four into the legside and barely gave the bowlers a break from then on, as he and Tristan Stubbs recalibrated the innings.
The pair put on 66 to boss the middle overs, with Dawson reaching back-to-back fifties.
They had both gone by the end of the 17th over, Dawson to give Mills his second wicket, but Fuller and Hilton Cartwright lifted the Hawks to 173 with 37 runs in the final three overs.
The momentum stayed with the batters when the Sharks started their innings as Dan Hughes pumped Fuller for 17 and then Harrison Ward took Scott Currie for the same two overs later.
Sussex clearly won the powerplay again, thumping 67, but a wicket with the last ball of the restrictions – Ward leg before to Fuller – started to send the momentum back towards Hampshire.
Where Fuller’s first 11 balls had been dispatched for 37, his next seven returned 2-3 – as he picked up Tom Alsop on his middle-overs return.
Hughes and Coles fell, caught off Lumsden and wonderfully caught and bowled by Dawson respectively, in successive balls to continue the Hawks taking control.
That turned to a dictatorship of the middle when Jack Leaning was stumped off Dawson, and John Simpson was caught and bowled by Currie.
Hampshire rounded things off in style as Wood had Price nicking off, Mills was bowled to give Dawson his third victim before Lumsden castled Henry Crocombe to complete the 29-run win.
Report supplied by ECB Reporters’ Network supported by Rothesay.