Twenty20 Cup 2004: Leicestershire Foxes Beat Surrey by 7 Wickets at Edgbaston — Brad Hodge's 77* Turns the Final

Leicestershire Foxes won the Twenty20 Cup 2004 on 7 August 2004 at Edgbaston, Birmingham, defeating Surrey by 7 wickets. Surrey scored 168/6 in 20 overs — a challenging total for the format's early era; Leicestershire chased it in 19.1 overs (169/3). Brad Hodge scored 77* off 53 balls as Player of the Match, the unbeaten innings that anchored Leicestershire's chase. It was Leicestershire's first domestic T20 title — and a rematch of sorts, with Surrey having won the inaugural 2003 final before losing the 2004 edition to the Foxes.

Brad Hodge 77* Off 53: The Chase-Anchor in the Second-Ever T20 Final

Brad Hodge's 77* off 53 balls in Leicestershire's chase of Surrey's 168/6 — anchoring the Foxes to 169/3 in 19.1 overs — was a batting performance that demonstrated the early T20 format's most effective chase template: a senior batsman building an unbeaten innings that combined accumulation in the middle overs with acceleration at the death. Hodge, the Australian right-handed batter who had become one of the county circuit's most reliable batting performers in his years with Leicestershire, had led the 2004 Twenty20 Cup competition in runs scored (Darren Maddy, his Leicestershire colleague, also contributed significantly to the county's batting depth). His 77* in the final — the highest individual score in Edgbaston's first T20 Finals Day — gave Leicestershire the chase foundation that the 7-wicket winning margin reflected: the Foxes never looked like losing once Hodge was set.

Surrey Runner-Up Twice: Back-to-Back Finals Day Appearances

Surrey's 168/6 in the 2004 Twenty20 Cup final — a competitive total by the standards of 2004's early T20 batting norms — was the score that Surrey Lions brought into their second consecutive Twenty20 Cup final, having won the inaugural 2003 edition and then returning as runners-up in 2004. Surrey's back-to-back Finals Day appearances (2003 winners, 2004 runners-up) reflected the quality of their T20 squad under Adam Hollioake's captaincy and the white-ball infrastructure that Surrey county cricket had built. Leicestershire's 7-wicket win over the reigning champions — chasing 169 with 5 balls to spare — confirmed that Hodge's batting and the Foxes' collective team performance had been the most complete combination on the 2004 Finals Day. Surrey would return to Finals Day in 2005, again reaching the final — a third consecutive Final appearances run that reflected their T20 competitiveness in the competition's founding years.

Twenty20 Cup 2004 in Context

The Twenty20 Cup 2004 was the competition's second season, retaining the county structure (North and South groups, semi-finals, and final) from the inaugural 2003 edition but moving Finals Day from Trent Bridge to Edgbaston — the venue it would retain permanently. Surrey reaching the 2004 final as reigning champions gave the competition an early-era continuity narrative (defending champions returning to the final) that the T20 format's subsequent evolution of franchise names and identities would make less visible in later years. Leicestershire's 7-wicket win gave the East Midlands county a domestic T20 championship that — like Northamptonshire's 2016 Blast title years later — demonstrated that the competition was not the exclusive domain of England's most established and commercially prominent county teams.