Joe Clarke’s 33-ball 68 sets up Birmingham Phoenix’s 10-run win over Trent Rockets
Joe Clarke’s 33-ball 68 launched Birmingham Phoenix to the second-highest total in men’s Hundred history, and Trent Rockets fell 10 runs short despite Tom Banton’s 67.
Jul 25, 2026
Edgbaston got the game it was promised on Friday night. Birmingham Phoenix hammered 214 for 4, the second-highest total in the history of the men’s Hundred, and still had to sweat before beating Trent Rockets by 10 runs. Between them the two sides hit 29 sixes, 17 of them in the Phoenix innings alone.
Clarke and Smeed take the game away early
Joe Clarke settled the shape of the innings inside the first 25 balls. He was 50 off 24, the Phoenix were 100 up inside 44, and the opening stand had reached 104 before Calvin Harrison finally found a way through. Clarke finished with 68 from 33, seven fours and four sixes, and added two catches behind the stumps on the way to the player-of-the-match award.
Will Smeed was the quieter half of that partnership and still got to fifty off 27 balls. Rehan Ahmed then went after his former team, 48 from 25 with five sixes, having moved to Birmingham from the Rockets in the winter. Donovan Ferreira closed the innings with 22 not out from nine balls and three more into the stands. Harrison was the one Rockets bowler who came out of it well, taking both openers and conceding 27 from his 20 deliveries. Matt Henry went for 48 in 15.
Duckett and Allen give the Rockets a chance
A target of 215 from 100 balls sounds like a lost cause. For a while it was not. Ben Duckett and Finn Allen put on 65 in 29 balls, Allen striking six fours and three sixes in a 17-ball 43, and the Rockets reached three figures only three balls slower than the Phoenix had. Duckett went for 49 from 25 with the score on 102.
What they lacked was a finisher. Tim David lasted three balls, Sam Billings made 12, and Mitchell Santner was run out at a point when the Rockets needed to accelerate rather than rebuild. Tom Banton kept the chase alive almost on his own, 67 from 32 balls with five sixes, until Scott Currie had him caught with six balls left and 29 still needed.
Currie and Tariq hold the line
Currie finished with 2 for 40. Usman Tariq, the Pakistan mystery spinner Birmingham bought for £140,000 in the draft as the first Pakistan player picked in the competition, took 2 for 36, and his victims were Allen and David, the two wickets that broke the chase’s rhythm. Harrison swung two sixes off the last two balls he faced to make the margin look narrower than it had felt.
It was the opening fixture for both sides, so the four points lift the Phoenix to second on net run rate and leave the Rockets seventh with ground to make up. Neither camp will mind the run-scoring. Four hundred and eighteen runs in 200 balls is the version of this tournament the owners paid for.