Heritage Insight: Derbyshire's quarter-final history

Derbyshire’s qualification for the quarter finals of the T20 Vitality Blast competition means that the club has reached this stage of a tournament for the third time in six years. Heritage Officer David Griffin looks back at Derbyshire’s quarter-final history.

The highly anticipated match against Somerset at Taunton on Saturday 9 July will be Derbyshire’s 28th quarter-final since limited overs matches were formally introduced in England and Wales in 1963, and their fourth in Twenty20 cricket since the format began in 2003. It will also be Derbyshire’s first away knockout game since the T20 semi final against Essex at Edgbaston in 2019.

14 of the 27 previous quarter-finals were played at home, with Ilkeston hosting the game against Somerset in the Gillette Cup in 1977, and Derby staging the remaining fixtures. Chesterfield has never hosted a quarter final, despite staging semi finals in 1969 and 1975.

Derbyshire won 10 of the 27 games – those nine wins coming at Derby (4), Cardiff (2), Bristol, Taunton, Trent Bridge and The Oval – and on six occasions Derbyshire progressed to the final of the competition, winning twice, in 1981 and 1993.

Kim Barnett, remarkably, played in 16 quarter finals, while Dominic Cork played in nine, and was engaged in a coaching capacity in two.

One of the more thrilling quarter finals was against Nottinghamshire at Derby in 1981, the year Derbyshire won the Nat West Trophy. Nottinghamshire, with Rice, Hadlee and Randall, were expected to outgun a Derbyshire side missing two key players: opening bowler, Mike Hendrick, and fellow England Test Match all-rounder, Geoff Miller. However, Steve Oldham – replacing the injured Hendrick, and the 22-year-old Paul Newman, took six wickets between them, out-bowling their more celebrated Nottinghamshire counterparts, as Derbyshire recorded a remarkable 23-run win, having only totalled 164 all out in 59 overs.

In 1993, Derbyshire’s quarter final win over Somerset in the Benson and Hedges Cup was something of a collector’s item. Derbyshire and Somerset tried to get a match underway at a sodden Taunton for several days before the tie was finally resolved in a bowl-out with Derbyshire progressing to the semi-finals and a subsequent final win on that never-to-be-forgotten July evening at Lord’s.

Derbyshire’s three previous quarter-finals in t20 cricket ended in two defeats, to Lancashire at Old Trafford in 2005, and to Hampshire at Derby in 2017 when Shahid Afridi-inspired the visitors to a 101-run victory, and one memorable victory, against Gloucestershire at Bristol in 2019.

Derbyshire reached quarter finals in eight consecutive seasons between 1992 and 1998, winning two, while their best consecutive winning run was three between 1978 and 1981.

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Heather Knight’s England side are aiming to extend their unbeaten streak in Derby with T20s against South Africa and India this summer.