User:Harrias/2003 Twenty20 Cup final

The 2003 Twenty20 Cup final was a cricket match between Surrey County Cricket Club and Warwickshire County Cricket Club, who were known in one-day competitions as the Surrey Lions and Warwickshire Bears respectively, played on 19 July 2003 at Trent Bridge in London. It was the first final of the Twenty20 Cup, which itself was the first domestic Twenty20 competition between first-class sides.

Background
The Twenty20 Cup was a 20 overs-per-side competition established in England and Wales in 2003, which replaced the 50 overs-per-side Benson & Hedges Cup. The 20-over format was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board because they believed that a shorter version of the game was needed in order to attract families to matches. In 2003, it was one of four tournaments across three different formats played by first-class county cricket teams.

The competition maintained the regional group structure used by the Benson & Hedges Cup in which the eighteen county teams were split into three groups. Within each group every team played each other once. The top team from each group progressed to the semi-final, along with the best second-placed team. Both semi-finals and the final were played at the same ground on the same day, marketed as "Finals' Day". Writing in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, Hugh Chevallier said that it was "paradoxical" that a format designed to over quickly culminated in "the longest day of cricket anyone could remember".

Summary
Played on the same day as both the semi-finals, the match was a day/night game. The Warwickshire captain, Knight, won the toss and elected to bat first. On a pitch described by Vic Marks of The Guardian as "never reliable and which deteriorated as the day progressed", Surrey's opening bowlers—Jimmy Ormond and Azhar Mahmood—were immediately in the ascendancy. In the first over of the match, Warwickshire's Neil Carter was dropped by Ian Salisbury before scoring a six. Two overs later, Carter was bowled by Jimmy Ormond after deflecting the ball onto his own stumps, having scored eight runs. Warwickshire's other opening batter, Knight, was bowled by Ormond two overs later, having also scored eight runs. Later in the same over, Ormond collected his third wicket of the match, when Jim Troughton was caught by Ali Brown at slip, leaving the Bears on 22 for three. Although Trevor Penney provided Warwickshire with some positivity in the sixth over by scoring a six, Mahmood also picked up his first wicket of the match, when Ian Bell was caught out. Ormond continued his dominance in the subsequent over, claiming the wicket of Dougie Brown caught behind. During the next five overs, Surrey switched to their slower bowlers, and the Warwickshire pair of Penney and Tony Frost were able to gradually build their run total, until Penney was bowled by Hollioake in the twelfth over for 33 runs, at which point Warwickshire's score was 63 for six.

Scorecard
Umpires:
 * Barry Dudleston and John Holder

Key
 * * – Captain
 * † – Wicket-keeper
 * c Fielder – Indicates that the batsman was dismissed by a catch by the named fielder
 * b Bowler – Indicates which bowler gains credit for the dismissal