The Sarnians beat the Isle of Man 2-0 last weekend with the third and final game abandoned after just nine deliveries were bowled before heavy rain curtailed the action on Sunday afternoon and now their focus turns to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Europe Sub-Regional Qualifier, which begins in 10 days’ time.
‘We’ve had a fairly settled squad and a couple of faces changed here or there, but everyone knows their roles and I think this weekend was more about another stepping stone playing as a group,’ said Guernsey captain Ollie Nightingale after receiving the Island Series trophy.
‘It’s been another opportunity to get out there as a tight small group and keep working towards the goal of the tournament.’
With the series played on the KGV mat to replicate conditions they will face in Cyprus, the Guernsey bowlers did much of the heavy lifting in game one on Saturday as they restricted the visitors to just 110 from their 20 overs with Adam Martel the pick of the bowlers with 3 for 10.
A third-wicket stand of 84 between Tom Nightingale and Matt Stokes in the reply helped the Greens to a convincing seven-wicket win.
Game two on Sunday was all about Stokes and his historic century, the first by a Guernsey batter in T20Is, which laid the platform for a record score of 198 and a 40-run success before the washout scuppered chances of a whitewash.
‘We’ve been good in patches. It’s probably not been the perfect weekend with both weather and the way we’ve played, but it’s been good to get out there and play some T20 international cricket,’ said skipper Nightingale.
‘It comes with a different pressure, so the guys have done well there and got two wins.’
As well as eulogising about Stokes, saying ‘he does it his way, he does it with style, he does it with class’, the captain also had words of praise for his left-arm spinner Martel.
‘Plugger’s bowled really nicely. I think this summer he’s actually really nicely and probably the best I’ve seen him bowled for a while, so to go into the tournament with him having confidence is great.
‘Tommy and Josh [Butler] have had to bowl a bit, which again has been a bit different and something that we can look to use in the tournament, so hopefully they’ve got a bit of confidence.
‘So yeah, a well-rounded performance with the same bloke [Stokes] standing up and being better than the rest of us again.’
After his hundred, which came off just 54 balls and included 11 fours and three sixes, Stokes himself reported that he feels in good touch heading into the qualifier and he believes it might help being earlier in the season straight off the back of the county academy and Isle of Man series.
‘I’m just watching the ball and playing my natural game – and I think that’s where I play best, when I’m not thinking about too much and backing my options,’ he said.
‘If it’s in an area that I know that I can hit it for four or six, I’m doing that and not really thinking too much about what’s happened two or three balls ago – the ball’s coming down, you focus on that ball and then we reset for the next one.
‘So I think that’s been key to the start of this season.’
