Essex sneak through; Northants, Lancashire in quarters after rain

This was not a normal Friday evening. The last series of group matches in the NatWest T20 Blast saw a number of teams deeply interested in what their rivals were doing or, more to the point, given the wide band of rain that moved in from the West, whether they were playing at all.

And, in the end, the final quarter-final berth was confirmed in the dying moments of a sodden evening when Gloucestershire beat Glamorgan in a Five5 which meant Essex clung on for fourth place in the South Group.

After heroic efforts by the Glamorgan groundstaff, and with just minutes to spare, the thrash began moments before 9pm. Essex fans suddenly swelled Gloucestershire's support base. They glued themselves to radio and social media to track every ball. It was out of their hands, but Glamorgan could only post 45 in their five overs. Gloucestershire cruised it.

Paul Grayson, the Essex coach, was relieved. "We would have preferred to have played and beaten Kent to book our quarter-final place but I am still happy that we have made it through," he said. "After our poor start in the competition when we lost four of our opening five matches, to have reached the quarter-finals is something that we have to be happy with no matter how it was achieved."

Earlier, at lunchtime, the position in the North Group was that Birmingham Bears and Worcestershire Rapids had secured home quarter-finals; the remaining places would be taken by two of Northamptonshire Steelbacks, Lancashire Lightning and Nottinghamshire Outlaws with the Trent Bridge side needing to get more points than one of the other pair in order to make the last eight. If no game could be played, Notts were out.

The situation in the South Group was never so simple. While Kent Spitfires had booked their home quarter-final spot for Saturday August 15, the remaining three places were to be fought over by six counties: Hampshire, Sussex, Essex, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire and Surrey. It was, in its way, as near as county cricket gets to an election night.

The first no-result came in from Kennington North, where Surrey's home match against Sussex Sharks at The Oval was abandoned early on. This eliminated Surrey. It also moved Sussex up to second in the group but, quaintly, did not even guarantee their qualification for the last eight.

And that was it for an hour or more. Somerset's home game with Middlesex had bit the Taunton mud but neither of those teams could qualify anyway.

Across the rest of the country, savvy captains took the view that play might still be possible in their own game for just as long as they knew other matches had not been called off. At Worcester the great ground could only be viewed through a thin film of rain. Everyone waited for conditions to improve in the full knowledge that they probably would not. Peter Roebuck once described English cricket as a dry game in a wet land.

At 6.45 umpires Steve Garratt and Jeremy Lloyds declared that no play would be possible at Worcester and at more or less the same time, the game between Leicestershire and Notts was also abandoned. Those decisions sorted out the North Group and made it clear that Lancashire Lightning would visit Kent Spitfires.

"There a few nervous moments checking on my weather thing," Ashley Giles, Lancashire's cricket director, said. "It suddenly brightened up a little bit at Leicester but it appears it has gone dark.

"It is unfortunate for Notts but of course good news for us. It's not the way you want to go through to a quarter-final but one of our targets was to get to the quarters for a start, then move on from there."

Mick Newell, Notts' director of cricket, had an honest assessment. "It wasn't about tonight, it was about the results earlier in the competition,'' he said. "We've beaten all the teams which have finished in the top four at least once, so we only have ourselves to blame."

Now all that was needed was for similarly executive decisions to be made by the returning officers at Chelmsford and Cardiff. But at Chelmsford, the rain stopped and the umpires decided to have a glance at 7.45. However, it was futile and the match was abandoned shortly before 8.30pm, leaving all eyes on events in Cardiff. Despite all the rain, there was drama to the very end.