It was long overdue, but Birmingham Phoenix finally delivered some cheer and entertainment to a vibrant Edgbaston crowd in their final Hundred outing of 2023 when they overpowered London Spirit with an emphatic 77-run win on Thursday night.
Adam Milne likes Edgbaston, we knew that anyway. His 4/18, including three wickets in his opening spell, was a nice pre-cursor to what he'll hope will follow in a New Zealand shirt on this same ground next weekend when England take on the Kiwis.
The ending of Will Smeed's Hundred campaign pretty much reflected how the entire competition had gone for the Somerset opener, whose top score was a paltry 23 - here, Smeed didn't survive beyond the very first ball of the match. Jamie Smith, though, has been one of the success stories of an otherwise pretty awful Phoenix campaign; he backed up his excellent 60 against the Invincibles with another useful 38 at Trent Bridge over the weekend.
Still only 23, Smith is tall, well built and can hit a long ball. In form, and with the bowling wayward, he cashed in alongside Ben Duckett to lay the foundation for what promised at one stage to be a monster total. The pair put on 94 in just 54 deliveries - nine overs, if you're a traditionalist, or just shy of 11 sets if you are a modernista.
While Smith perished after passing 50, when he prodded a delivery from Liam Dawson back at him, Moeen Ali actually accelerated the run rate. His quick-fire 32 from 14 deliveries included three monster sixes which were straight out of the Birmingham Phoenix 2021 playbook. When he went aerial one too many times, the Phoenix had a healthy 145 on the board and still had a quarter of their innings to take up.
There was still time for Benny Howell, bumped up to seven in the absence of Chris Woakes and Dan Mousley, to nail a couple more enormous maximums before Chris Benjamin nicked the final ball of the innings past former Phoenix teammate and fellow wicket keeper Matthew Wade for one final boundary - the Spirit needed 185, a total which would take some getting.
They never got close. Step up Milne, Moeen's trusty opening pace-man - emphasis on the pace. Bowling deliveries which, from the Hollies you could barely track - particularly if you were amongst the group of Minions who observed proceedings through their beer goggles - he struck instantly and with regularity.
One after the other, Zak Crawley, Michael Pepper and Matt Wade all departed as Milne ripped through the Spirit top order. His back-to-back sets cost just three runs and yielded as many wickets. From there, even the ominous Hundred score predictor - usually quite generous to teams under the pump - dismissed any chance of anything other than a comfortable home win.
The impressive Tanveer Sangha, whose chances have been limited in this Hundred but who has caught the eye when he has been afforded the opportunity, claimed equally important and impressive figures of 3/16 - he relied on Smeed to take one particularly extraordinary catch on the Hollies boundary.
Daryl Mitchell, Milne's Kiwi buddy who'll also take heart from this Edgbaston outing before he returns in a black kit on Sunday week, was the only batter to push back against the Phoenix's dominant bowling unit. His masterful innings of 57 from 36 ensured that this wasn't quite as embarrassing a sign off as it might've been. For the Phoenix, who tied things up when Tom Helm clean bowled Mitchell with them still 77 runs behind, this was a heartening finale to end an otherwise extremely underwhelming year.
