In a new series for this year's Vitality Blast, an expert eye will provide a deep dive into each of The Blaze and Notts Outlaws' Trent Bridge opponents.
As Trent Bridge hosts its final double-header of this season's Vitality Blast, a detailed look at Durham Men is provided by commentator Rob Rush.
Secure your seats to Friday’s double-header on 11 July here...
Based on where Durham find themselves in the North Group at this stage, it has to be said it’s been a successful season so far?
Absolutely! After the quarter-final last year, where we left it late to qualify, I thought we’d progress on a step or two, but I absolutely wasn’t expecting to be top two!
I think it’s taken us by surprise. We beat Bears and then had a tight loss to Lancashire to start the competition, but since then, we haven’t really put a foot wrong.
The real thing too, to our benefit, is different people stepping up to contribute. We’ve signed an overseas bowler and an overseas all-rounder, and then we’ve trusted in our domestic batters to do their jobs.
With the mention of everyone contributing, it might be hard to pick the standout performers, but who would you single out as the key players?
[The captain] Alex Lees has led from the front with the bat, and Graham Clark has performed well too.
Ollie Robinson has been relatively quiet with the bat by his standards, but he’s always capable of putting a really good innings together.
From a point of view when you’re going into a game to watch it, it’s exciting that you almost don’t know who’s going to step up, because everyone can.
It’s good to see that there’s a lot of trust in that group; you’re not relying on two or three people every time because there’s a collective effort going on.
How about younger players who are coming through into the team? Who are the up-and-comers worth watching out for?
It’s difficult, because we’ve gone with quite an experienced squad this year, but the one who might be considered closest is Ben McKinney.
He’s an opening batter in red-ball cricket, but he’s viewed more by [Durham head coach] Ryan Campbell as a T20 finisher.
There’s a desire to bring him in lower down the order, but he has also batted at three as well, so he’s very much taking on that floating role.
He’s not quite nailed down a spot yet, but depending on the game situation, he can come in at different points.
The other one from a bowling point of view is Luke Robinson, but unfortunately, he’s been injured; he’s not played a single first-team game all year.
It’s a shame, because he was said to be close to getting into the T20 side, but he’s just been injured, so he’s not had a chance to bowl a ball!
With the idea of an experienced squad representing Durham this year and the results going the way they have been, the aim has to be Finals Day from here?
Yes, 100% the target is Finals Day. Ryan Campbell spoke about last season, wanting the idea of getting through to the quarter-finals to become the norm.
Because of how poor we’d previously been in T20 cricket, we looked at that at the time as an exception, but now we want to be constantly getting out of the group.
If you’re going a step further, the ideal outcome would be a home quarter-final; we haven’t had one of those in ages - but the target on the whole has to be Finals Day.
If you look at the position we’ve put ourselves in now, we’ve given ourselves a real chance of being there, so it’s definitely that.
Hopefully this year we’ll have a better situation with our overseas players, so we’re not left with just one, but the confidence that we can do something this year is definitely there.
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