Head Coach Peter Moores hailed a ‘very good’ Notts Outlaws display at Durham Jets that secured a first win on the road in this year’s NatWest T20 campaign.
The Outlaws lost their first two away matches, at Yorkshire Vikings and Birmingham Bears, before bouncing back with consecutive home wins over Derbyshire Falcons and Northamptonshire Steelbacks at the weekend.
And the team made it three wins on the spin with an emphatic nine-wicket victory over their winless hosts, who have lost all five of their Blast fixtures to date.
Samit Patel took 3-26 and fellow opening bowler Luke Wood 2-15, including two wickets in his opening over, as the Jets limped to 123 all out from 18.1 overs.
Alex Hales, who hit 44 from 22 balls, Riki Wessels, who added 49 not out from 48 and Brendan Taylor, who made 33 not out from 26, then helped Notts breeze to victory with an over to spare.
“We played very well,” said Moores. “It was a very good all-round performance from the players with some key individual contributions.
“We have managed to take wickets in most of our games, which is very important, and we did that again tonight.
“Luke Wood’s two quick wickets in the second over, which he got bowling with good pace, really got us off to a flying start and we kept picking up wickets all the way through.
“There was some great work by Samit and Dan Christian has had a really good couple of games as captain by looking to be aggressive and putting opposing sides under pressure.
“We also batted very well, and credit should go to Alex Hales because he went out there and scored very quickly in the power-play to take the game away from them.
“It was great to get it done and dusted quickly and get back on the coach so we can get home that little bit earlier and have more time to recover for the Worcestershire home game tomorrow.”
Notts have bounced back strongly after a near two-week break either side of the Trent Bridge Test between England and South Africa.
And with six points now in the bag, the North Group table takes on an altogether different look than it did a week ago before three successes in the space of five days.
Moores added: “It is an interesting looking group, because a lot of the sides in it seem to be beating each other.
“Once you start getting towards the upper end of it, then it really increases the excitement for those final big matches.
“We still have a lot of games to play over the next couple of weeks, but if we do ourselves justice during that time, it will push us a long way towards qualification.”
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