MARCHANT de Lange notched the first five-for of the competition to help Trent Rockets ease to a comfortable victory over Southern Brave, forcing Ross Whitely to admit “He is a class act.”

A crowd just short of 13,000 enjoyed Trent Bridge’s first taste of The Hundred as Dawid Malan and D’Arcy Short made unbeaten half-centuries to sink Southern Brave in their competition opener.

Whiteley top-scored with 39 for the Brave but with no other batter passing 21 their total always looked like it would fall well short on the good surface.

After choosing to bat first, Brave limped to 56 for four at halfway and lost key-man James Vince for a duck, bowled by a superb Luke Wood yorker.

An eventual modest target of 127 with nine wickets and 18 deliveries to spare was chalked up easily by the Rockets, but not before South African de Lange had showed that raw pace can still be a useful attribute in short-format cricket, finishing with five wickets for 20 from 20 deliveries.

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Speaking after the match, Brave’s Whitely said: “De Lange is quite an aggressive bowler and he hit the deck pretty hard and used his yorker well towards the end. He is a class act.

“Losing a couple of wickets in the Powerplay is always tough. We tried to rebuild through the middle but kept losing wickets at crucial times and were probably 25 or 30 short.

“I’m not sure anyone knows what a good score is in this format yet and it is going to take a while to get used to it.

“We’ve got used to seeing over-rate on the scoreboard and that’s not there anymore, so we need to be quite good with our numbers to work out where we are and that will take a bit of adapting to, but that’s part and parcel of it, something we’ll have to do a little bit better at in future games.”

The bowler himself, de Lange, added: “The top wicket takers in the short formats are normally spinners and slower bowlers but I feel like there is a time and a place for express pace. I tried to keep it simple and just do the basics well and it was a pitch that helped me today.

“In general, our bowling unit stuck to their plans and our captain led very well. It was quite a comfortable win in the end. The batters did really well in assessing the wicket as time went on through the innings. You’ve actually got more time than you think. We’ve got a solid team and we gelled together pretty well for the first time out.

“I didn’t expect to be involved in the competition until a couple of weeks ago but I just try to take opportunities whenever they come along.”