David the Destroyer! Big-hitting Tim hopes to take Lancashire to T20 glory and secure a place in Australia’s World Cup squad
Lancashire faces potential powder keg clash with Yorkshire on Saturday
Tim David hopes to use Twenty20 final day to push his World Cup claims
Yorkshire gets a boost with Dawid Malan’s return from international duty
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Tim David hopes to use another opportunity on a big stage to further push his claims to be Australia’s finisher at the upcoming World Cup.
The consistency of the 26-year-old’s hitting the ball this year has been remarkable, culminating in him helping Lancashire to the Twenty20 final day and booking another potential powder keg clash with Yorkshire.
David needs 16 runs to become the third batter to 1,000 runs in T20 cricket in 2022. He follows leader Shan Masood with 41 runs, despite having to deal with 208 deliveries less.
Tim David helped Lancashire to Twenty20 final day and a ravishing Roses clash
His score is all the more impressive due to the fact that he tends to come in at number 5, taking over from Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Kieron Pollard as the world’s leading hitter in the late innings.
Australian captain Aaron Finch has revealed that the world champions are considering David in their plans to defend the title this fall.
“It gives me great confidence that I have been able to do what I have done, but international cricket is a different beast,” said David.
“They won the World Cup eight months ago and that team hasn’t changed since then. Those guys have been playing for Australia for a long time, but if I had the chance to be a part of it, I’d be really happy.”
Should the call come, David, who has 14 caps for Singapore, the country of his birth, would match David Warner in representing Australia before playing a first-class match.
Not that a career path that took on an £820,000 contract with Mumbai Indians earlier this year was necessarily the path he charted when he started with Western Australia. “I saw that it takes quite a few specific skills to do the job in white ball cricket and I thought that was something I could do,” said a man whose 186 pass rate is only improved this year by Rilee Rossouw of Somerset. (187) of those scored 400 points.
“Until I started doing it in games it was kind of a hedged gamble, but I felt my skills were leading me to that and then it was just really hard work and constantly trying to improve myself.”
David also has fond recent memories of Saturday’s semi-final opponents in Edgbaston: he scored 101 runs on 50 balls over two heady Roses group stage clashes of the Vitality Blast, when Lancashire took a draw with the dismissal of Harry Brook at Emirates Old Trafford and then cut one last-ball thriller when a boundary catch sealed a four-point win over Headingley.
The consistency of the 26-year-old’s ball hitting this year was remarkable
“A pessimist might say Yorkshire is going to win this one, but we’re looking forward to it,” said David. “These Roses matches are exciting. There is always something in the air. It doesn’t matter who’s on top, there’s going to be some kind of change in momentum.”
Yorkshire, one of only five counties to have never been crowned English T20 champions, somehow defeated Surrey in the quarter-final, despite the hosts needing just 11 runs from the last 12 balls.
They are boosted by the return of Dawid Malan from international duty and will be captained by Brook, released from England’s 50-over squad who will finish their series with India on Sunday. However, not released are Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and David Willey and also Adil Rashid and Finn Allen are missing.
Lancashire will have Phil Salt and Matt Parkinson after they were released by England coach Matthew Mott, but Jos Buttler and Liam Livingstone are off limits.
Yorkshire gets a boost with the return of England’s Dawid Malan from international duty
There are no such availability issues regarding the afternoon half. Somerset enter the final day after an extraordinary quarter-final against Derbyshire a week ago, in which they set a new match record of 265 for five and the result was a 191 point victory – the largest margin in a domestic Twenty20 match anywhere.
Rossouw, who is second after James Vince of Hampshire among the leading points scorers of the tournament, brought his six count to 40. No one else has made it to 30. The South African’s signing could be the missing ingredient for a Somerset squad beaten by Kent in the 2021 final.
Should Hampshire prevail, it would be their third title, leveling them with Leicestershire, English cricket’s most successful T20 club.