Cricket 2014
An Extraordinary Day
March 27th 2014
After a few too many mundane matches,
today has brought two corkers. A Dutch colleague who knows next to nothing about
cricket was crouched alongside me in the dining room at lunchtime watching,
stunned, as The Netherlands closed on an unblievable win against South
Africa. Sadly, it was not to be and South Africa brought off another amazing
narrow escape. Having won by 2 runs against New Zealand, they beat The
Netherlands by 5 in a game that the Dutch should have won. The contrast with
the Sri Lanka game was remarkable: the Dutch bowled with discipline and chased
as if it were Ireland in front. So fast was their scoring that it seemed that
unless they panicked, victory would come with several overs to spare. The Dutch
though, can hold their heads high… they left the South Africans close to panic.
The game that came afterwards was, if
anything, even more extraordinary. Few pundits gave England much chance of
winning and fewer still thought that, having dropped catch after catch in the
outfield, England would be able to chase 190 to win, especially as it would be
the seventh highest successful chase ever in a T20. In fact, only seven times
before today had a team chased 180 successfully in a T20 international.
When the opposition starts the chase
with a double-wicket maiden you normally think that it’s curtains. However,
Hales and Morgan batted sensibly and stayed either ahead of Sri Lanka at an
equivalent stage or, at least, very close. The biggest difference in the scores
was 6 after 8 overs (Sri Lanka 58-1, England 52-2) but, from the end of the 10th
over England were never behind save, momentarily and marginally after 18 overs.
If you were watching the scores you could see that unless England did something
stupid they would be very close at the end. As the ball got harder to grip, the
scoring rate mounted and Sri Lanka’s chances of pulling the match back got
slimmer. Two wickets in an over helped but then, as Sri Lanka played their
trump card, hoping that Malinga would kill England’s challenge; what it did
though was kill Sri Lanka’s as Ravi Bopara hit his first two balls for four and
calmed any nerves.
The headlines will be for Alex Hales’s
century and a magnificent innings it was, but England had other heroes too.
Eoin Morgan, whose recent form has been awful, played a wonderful innings. Ravi
Bopara supported calmly at the end when, so often in the past, batsmen have lost
their heads. And, with a chase of 200 a real possibility, Chris Jordan’s last
over, the penultimate of the innings, went for just 4 runs and included the
wicket of Sangakkara – 4-0-28-2 was the most economical spell of the day by any
bowler. Even Jade Dernbach had one of his better games of the recent past.
One win does not make England a great
side, but neither are they such a bad side as many have claimed. They now face
South Africa in a winner-takes all game on Saturday: the winner will almost
certainly make it through to the semi-Finals, the loser is out. South Africa
have squeaked past New Zealand and The Netherlands and blew a winning position
against Sri Lanka – you would worry a lot more if England were facing India.
There are still many permutations in
the group. Any of the four Full Members could still qualify. Sri Lanka must
beat New Zealand to qualify. South Africa have to beat England. England have to
beat South Africa and New Zealand have to beat Sri Lanka. Unless the Dutch play
party-poopers, the two winners will go through and the two losers will go out.
There is even a freak combination of results that would allow the Dutch to go
through (England beat South Africa, New Zealand beat Sri Lanka, the Dutch beat
both England and New Zealand, leaving all five sides on four points).
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