Sammy joins Hants for Blast

West Indies Twenty20 captain Darren Sammy has signed to represent Hampshire in this year’s NatWest T20 Blast.

The 32-year-old all-rounder, who led the Windies to the 2012 World T20 title, is again captaining the islanders in the current global tournament.

He will be available to Hampshire until his Caribbean Premier League commitments at the start of July.

Dawid Malan has spent the winter breaking new ground with England Lions, and has a fresh challenge to tackle on his return to the domestic scene with Middlesex.
The 28-year-old averaged over 50 in both the one-day and Twenty20 series against Pakistan A either side of Christmas as he finished the winter as the Lions' leading run-scorer.
Now Malan has been charged with reviving Middlesex’s formats in the NatWest T20 Blast – since winning the competition in 2008 they have failed to progress to the knock-out stages and have finished rock bottom of the South Group in the last two seasons.
Along with Eoin Morgan and Tim Murtagh, Malan is one of only three players remaining at Lord’s from Middlesex’s last successful pursuit of silverware eight years ago, and is keen to bring the good times back.
“We’re still in the process of chatting about our team targets; obviously we want to be trying to win every tournament we play in,” Malan told ecb.co.uk.
Based on their white-ball form in recent years that may seem optimistic, but there are plenty of reasons to be positive.