England seamer Matthew Potts took a match-winning maiden T20 five-wicket haul for Durham against Yorkshire in Sunday's (June 15) T20 Blast match.
Batting first at the Clifton Park Ground, Yorkshire were reduced to 28-3 early on, thanks to Zakary Foulkes dismissing captain Dawid Malan for a duck and Callum Parkinson’s twin strikes. Potts then tore through Yorkshire’s batting lineup, striking twice in the eighth over – removing William Luxton (9) and Will Sutherland (0) in the space of three balls – leaving them reeling at 55-5.
Yorkshire never recovered from the collapse as Potts added James Wharton (26), Jordan Thompson (19), and Dom Bess (6) to his wickets tally, finishing with exceptional figures of 5-17 off four overs. The innings folded at 128 in 19 overs, with Yorkshire scrambling for runs throughout.
Durham mounted a steady response, anchored by captain Alex Lees' 46-ball 62, needing 18 overs to seal the chase with six wickets in hand. Potts was named Player of the Match for his match-winning performance.
Match 53, Yorkshire vs Durham
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Career-best T20 figures for Matthew Potts
The figures of 5-17 mark Potts' best-ever performance in his 65-match T20 career, which began in 2019. Before this spell, he had taken three-wicket hauls on nine occasions, with his previous best being 3-8 off three overs for Durham against Lancashire in the 2020 T20 Blast.
Leading up to this match, Potts had endured a lean patch as far as wicket-taking is concerned, stretching back to his 2024 Hundred stint with Northern Superchargers and his 2025 SA20 campaign with MI Cape Town. While he had a decent Hundred campaign overall, taking eight wickets at an economy of 7.95, his last four games in the tournament fetched only three wickets, which were followed by two wicketless games in against Pretoria Capitals in the SA20.
He made his T20I debut in the series opener during England’s recent 3-0 clean sweep of the West Indies, returning figures of 2-48 before going wicketless again in his first T20 Blast 2025 match against Northants. In fact, from his last eight T20 outings before this one, Potts had recorded combined figures of 5-217, a tally he surpassed in a single outing with his 5-17 against Yorkshire.
Potts, who has represented England in 10 Tests, taking 36 wickets at an average of 29.44, was omitted from England’s squad for the first Test against India in the upcoming June-July series, despite their depleted pace stocks due to injuries. His exclusion underscores how far he has fallen in England’s fast-bowling pecking order. However, his standout T20 performance on Sunday offers a promising sign that he could reignite his international prospects.
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