Trent Rockets win to secure knockout spot

Dawid Malan and Alex Hales set up a comforable win for the home side, with Welsh Fire going through the whole campaign without a victory

Trent Bridge: Trent Rockets 172-4, Welsh Fire 143-6 - Trent Rockets win by 29 runs

Scorecard

Trent Rockets guaranteed themselves a qualification spot after a comfortable 29-run win against the Welsh Fire at Trent Bridge.

Batting first, the home side made 172 thanks to a solid 89-run partnership between Alex Hales (38) and Dawid Malan (58) as well as cameos from Daniel Sams (31) and Colin Munro (22).

The total was too much for Welsh Fire, as the Rockets' spinners Tabraiz Shamsi and Samit Patel spun them out of the game and ensured they would go the whole season without a win.

Put into bat, the Rockets made a bright start, with the in-form Malan striking two boundaries to start the innings. The tournament's leading run-scorer has made batting look easy and Malan continued to impress, striking 26 from his first 12 balls to leave the Rockets 42 without loss after the powerplay.

The opening partnership continued to find the boundary and took the Rockets to 78 at halfway. David Payne would eventually get the breakthrough from the 58th ball as Hales found the offside boundary sweeper to go for 38. The Nottinghamshire opener has scored over 250 runs in the group stages and put his name back into the conversation for an England call-up.

Someone who is certain to be flying to Australia for the T20 World Cup is Malan, whose 58 took his group stage tally to 358 runs. He eventually fell from the 79th ball, holing out off the bowling of Matt Critchley.

The innings wasn't allowed to stutter at the end thanks to an entertaining cameo from the promoted Sams. The Australian clubbed two huge sixes off his second and third deliveries and didn't look back, striking at 221. His innings and that of Munro took the Rockets up to 172 for 4.

^{Dawid Malan made another half century for Rockets (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)}

The Welsh Fire would need to get their highest total of the tournament and with only Ben Duckett reaching the three-figure mark for tournament runs prior to the game, the odds seemed low on a Fire victory.

One underperforming star is Tom Banton who has produced a solitary score of note this season. The former England opener started well, crashing back-to-back fours before Cook got him lbw to end a poor campaign.

Clarke and Duckett would take the Fire to the powerplay on 33 for 1 but the introduction of spin, one of the Rockets' strongest weapons this year, brought a wicket. Samit Patel did Clarke in the flight to have him stumped bringing wild celebrations as Trent Bridge celebrated one of its favourite sons.

Critchley (55) and Duckett (25) began rebuilding the innings and had their side in with a chance at 71 for two after 50 balls. The spinners would reply again. Shamsi took the key wicket of Duckett after a good catch from Munro at mid-off. Four balls later, Shamsi dismissed fellow South African David Miller.

Patel would return and pick up another scalp to take his group stage tally to 10 at an average of 16. With the spinners taking four wickets, the spark was put out of the Fire's innings and Rockets could start planning for the eliminators.

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