Tag: India v South Africa

England Win in Colombo

A brief look back at happenings at the Women’s cricket world cup on Thursday and yesterday, and account of today’s match in Colombo and two photo galleries.

Although today’s match dominates this post I make mention of a couple of others as well.

THURSDAY AND YESTERDAY

Tuesday and Wednesday both saw threats of upsets, but in each case the big side came good in the end. On Thursday we finally saw an upset. For most of the chase it looked like India were in charge, but then Nadine de Klerk, batting at number eight, came to the party. An astounding display from the spin bowling all rounder saw four sixes in the space of 2.5 overs (the first two balls of the 47th over, the third and fifth of the 49th). That last six, de Klerk’s fifth in all, took South Africa to victory with seven balls to spare. In total de Klerk scored 84 not out from 54 balls. Remarkably the innings that seemed to have given India enough to defend, Richa Ghosh’s 94, was also scored from number eight, though I cannot comment on that innings other than the bare detail since I was at work while it was being played.

Yesterday I missed the New Zealand innings (see my previous post) but got to hear most of the Bangladesh reply. This match was a familiar tale for Bangladesh and Pakistan at this tournament – a respectable bowling performance but the batters were simply not up to the task. Chasing 225 Bangladesh were at one point 33-6, and although they fought back somewhat from that nadir the final margin was over 100 runs in the Kiwis favour.

GALLERY ONE

SRI LANKA v ENGLAND

The start was slightly delayed by a wet outfield, but both sides stuck to their spin heavy selection plans. Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to bowl, which did not worry Natalie Sciver-Brunt and England in the slightest since they would have batted first in any case.

Tammy Beaumont and Amy Jones began brightly before a combination of an over-optimistic call by Beaumont and a hesitation on the part of Jones cost the latter her wicket. Sri Lanka fared well once they had broken this partnership, but they made a crucial error when a catch offered by Sciver-Brunt, then on 3, went to ground. While no one else made a major contribution the England skipper batted through, cautiously at first, and finally blazingly aggressively in the closing stages of the innings. Her 117 off 117 balls with nine fours and two sixes was the highest individual score of the tournament so far and got England to 253-9, which looked enough.

With 18 runs on the board Sri Lanka lost Chamari Athapaththu to a calf issue – she left the field on a stretcher, but after treatment it was confirmed that she would be able to resume her innings. Vishmi Gunaratne was bowled by Charlie Dean for 10 (9) to make it 37-1, but then for a time Sri Lanka prospered. It was Sophie Ecclestone who changed all that. A high water mark of 95-1 degenerated to 103-4 in the space of 2.2 overs, with the tall left armer dismissing Hasini Perera with the aid of a catch by Alice Capsey, Harshitha Samarawickrama to a fine running catch by Lauren Bell and Kavisha Dilhari clean bowled. There was the merest hint of a revival after that, but 13 runs later Ecclestone effectively terminated Sri Lanka’s interest in proceedings by clean bowling the restored Athapaththu with a beauty for her fourth wicket of the innings (at this stage she had 4-5). In the process of spinning this web from which Sri Lanka could not extricate themselves Ecclestone reached 30 wickets in ODI world cup matches, in just her 12th such game, five matches fewer than the previous quickest to that mark. Sri Lanka resisted with sufficient determination that their last wicket fell with only 4.2 overs of their allocation left, but the margin of 89 runs tells a truer story of this one-sided match. Sciver-Brunt picked up a couple of wickets in this phase to go with her century, and was the last player to touch the ball in the match, holding the catch off Linsey Smith that dismissed Udeshika Prabodhani.

GALLERY TWO

My usual sign off…

A Thriller and a Display of Dominance

Over the weekend I followed the whole of one classic T20 match and the first innings of a very one sided One Day International (I missed the second innings as there was a family get together happening in Wells Next The Sea which I wanted to be part of). This post looks at both games.

THE MENS T20 WORLD CUP FINAL

This match would see history made whoever won it – India and South Africa, the two teams to make the final were both undefeated, and no side had ever gone through a Men’s T20 world cup undefeated. India batted first and their innings had its up and downs. The dominant feature was Virat Kohli’s one and only major innings of the tournament. They ended up with 176 to defend. South Africa batted well in their turn. They seemed to have settled the matter decisively when the 15th over, bowled by Kuldeep Yadav was butchered for 24 runs reducing the requirement from 54 off six overs to 30 off five overs. This virtually forced Indian skipper Rohit Sharma to turn to his best bowler, Jasprit Bumrah. The 16th over was economical, but no wickets fell, so South Africa still looked favourites. The 17th over kept India in contention, and saw them claim the vital wicket of Heinrich Klaasen. For the 18th over Sharma rightly opted to use Bumrah’s last over, hoping to close things out then. Bumrah not only kept it tight as always, but also got rid of Marco Jansen, which meant that with the required rate starting to become genuinely alarming for them the South Africans had only David Miller of their recognized batters left. Arshdeep Singh bowled the crucial 19th over, and by the end of it South Africa needed 16 off the last over, though Miller was at the strikers end. Hardik Pandya bowled the final over, and off the first ball thereof Miller went for a big shot down the ground and Suryakumar Yadav took a brilliant running catch to all but seal the match. Number nine Kagiso Rabada did his best, but another catch by Suryakumar Yadav off the penultimate ball of the match accounted for him, and South Africa needed nine off one ball to win. Nortje scored a single off the final ball and India won by seven runs (176-7 plays 169-8). In spite of South Africa’s reputation in global tournaments it has to be stated that THIS WAS NOT A CHOKE – India bowled superbly in the closing overs, and held a couple of excellent catches. This match was settled by good Indian cricket, not bad South African cricket. Scorecard here.

NEW ZEALAND WOMEN IN A SPIN

This was the second match of a three match ODI series between the England and New Zealand women’s teams, taking place at New Road, Worcester. New Zealand found themselves batting first as they had in the first match in which they were thoroughly hammered. At 114-3 with Amelia Kerr set and Maddy Green looking impressive as well they had a chance of a competitive total, but then the world’s number one and two ranked Women’s ODI bowlers, Sophie Ecclestone (left arm orthodox spin) and Charlie Dean (off spin) made their presences felt. Dean started the rout by pinning Green LBW, then Ecclestone got Brooke Halliday for six and Lauren Down for a duck, both clean bowled. Dean then got the big wicket of Amelia Kerr, caught and bowled for 43. Then a catch by Natalie Sciver-Brunt off Ecclestone accounted for Kiwi keeper Isabella Gaze for a duck, and three balls later Ecclestone clean bowled Molly Penfold for another duck to secure her fifth wicket, and 114-3 had become 124-9. Jess Kerr hit her way to 14, boosting the final total to 141 in company with Fran Jonas, before a second Sciver-Brunt catch, this time off the off spin of Alice Capsey ended the innings. Ecclestone has taken at least one wicket in each of her last 30 bowling innings across formats, a run going back to the start of 2023, and overall in those 30 innings she has taken 68 wickets at 14.75 a piece.

I missed the England run chase, but I do know that it was such an utter formality that Natalie Sciver-Brunt was able to engineer things at the end so that Maia Bouchier scored her first senior century (she has previously reached three figures in a U13s match). Scorecard here.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

India Looking Dominant at ODI World Cup

A look back at the weekend’s action in the 2023 ODI World Cup – a somewhat fortunate two points for Pakistan, two rather more well earned points for Australia and an utterly dominant display by hosts India in today’s table topping clash with South Africa. Also a large photo gallery.

Since I last posed there have been three matches at the ODI Cricket World Cup: New Zealand v Pakistan, Australia v England and India v South Africa. This post looks at these matches and at the state of play in the tournament.

NEW ZEALAND v PAKISTAN

DLS SAVES PAKISTAN

Pakistan won the toss and elected to bowl first, a type of decision that has a terrible track record at this tournament. That did not look like changing when New Zealand were batting – at the end of the 29th over I tweeted that a total of 400 was on for the Kiwis, and 21 overs later when their innings had run its course they were 401-6. A combination of an amazing innings from Fakhar Zaman, solid support from Babar Azam and good reading of the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern situation by Pakistan saved them from a poor decision at the toss. With rain threatening Pakistan started to seriously increase their scoring rate from the end of the 15th over onward, and by the time of the first intervention, in the 21st over they were 10 runs ahead of where they needed to be according to DLS. When the second and final interruption came midway through the 26th over they had increased their advantage to 20, and emerged with the two points when the rest of the match was rained out. It was well judged by Pakistan to get themselves significantly ahead of where DLS said they needed to be – there have been some famous mishaps involving DLS calculations, such as Mark Boucher studiously blocking a ball with the rain already falling in the belief that his side were already ahead on DLS, when they actually needed a single off that ball to get ahead. At the same time I feel that the Kiwis were hard done by – I don’t think that had the match been allowed by the weather to go the distance that Pakistan would have pulled off this chase would have been over 50 runs more than the biggest successful full distance chase of the tournament so far.

AUSTRALIA v ENGLAND

ANOTHER “WE’RE GOING TO BOWL” DISASTER

At 8AM UK time yesterday Jos Buttler won the toss at this match, and moments later uttered what has become something of doom laden phrase at this tournament “we’re going to bowl”.

This was not actually by any means one of England’s worst efforts of the tournament, though that is more a reflection of how bad they have been than of how good they were on the day. However, even with the bowlers showing up and restricting Australia to 286 from their 50 overs, it was never terribly close, and the final margin of 33 runs flattered England rather than Australia.

INDIA v SOUTH AFRICA

TOTAL HOME DOMINANCE

India were playing a world cup match at Eden Gardens, Kolkata for the first time since 1996 (that game was a disgrace for India in two ways, first they were totally outplayed by Sri Lanka, and second it was called off early and awarded to Sri Lanka because with India over 100 adrift with just two wickets left the “fans” rioted rather than suffer the closing stages of a defeat). Today’s match was billed as a clash of the titans, featuring as it did the two best teams of the tournament to date. India won the toss and chose to bat first, virtually a mandatory decision when facing South Africa (just ask Jos Buttler and Tom Latham, both of whom made the wrong decision in this situation)…

Rohit Sharma played some beautiful strokes early on, while Shubman Gill hit four fours and a six on his way to 23, but also allowed 18 dot balls to be bowled to him. India scored 91 off the first 10 overs and a huge total looked on. However, South Africa looked to have fought back quite well when India finished on 326-5 from their 50 overs. Virat Kohli equalled Sachin Tenulkar’s career tally of 49 ODI hundreds, while Suryakumar Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja provided some late hitting.

South Africa started their reply badly and it never got any better. Ravindra Jadeja followed his batting cameo by claiming five wickets with his left arm spin, while everyone else also bowled well. South Africa scraped up a beggarly 83 in 27.1 overs, going down by 243 runs, the biggest margin of defeat South Africa have ever suffered in any ODI (some of the sides from South Africa’s first incarnation as a test nation between 1889 and 1971 took some absolute thumpings). India had batted well, but it was the bowling that was really notable in this performance. Usually batting sides try to find a bowler or bowlers they can target and see if they can force the bowling side into using minor bowlers, but when an attack features three top class pacers and two top class spinners all of whom are in good form this is rather difficult to do.

HOW THE TOURNAMENT IS SHAPING UP SO FAR

India are now looking extremely likely to win the tournament – their performance against South Africa today was simply awesome, and was the second successive time they had bowled an opposition team out for under 100 while defending, a detail which might make Sri Lanka feel a little less ashamed of their own capitulation a few days ago. South Africa are qualified for the semi-finals and are likely to hang on to second place, meaning that they are most likely to face Australia in the semi-finals. The fourth semi-final slot is up for grabs between Afghanistan, New Zealand and Pakistan (listed in alphabetical order for the avoidance of prejudice). Bangladesh, England, Netherlands and Sri Lanka are battling for the minor places, with 7th and 8th in the group gaining qualification for the 2025 Champions Trophy. Personally I reckon that England deserve to finish the tournament precisely where they currently are: stone last. That would force them to make the necessary wholesale changes.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

Four goldfinches together is not the commonest sight.
A hare enjoying a comparatively pleasant November afternoon.