Sri Lanka beat England to the finishing post
The World Cup was today treated to a great game of cricket in the Super 8’s. Following on from Ireland and Zimbabwe’s tie, and Sri Lanka’s narrow loss after 4 wickets in 4 balls from Malinga to South Africa, the World Cup finally got interesting with a real edge-of-the-seat affair. Ironically, it was a situation that should have never occurred, for either side, and I suppose that’s the joy of cricket.
England came in to the game knowing that anything other than a win was likely to signal the end of their World Cup. We were once again treated to the promises and assurances that the game would be raised, and initially, it looked as though that, for once, had actually happened. England’s bowlers appeared to gel as a unit with the odd bit of magic from some individuals. Although wicketless, Jimmy Anderson got things started and returned economical figures. Sajid Mahmood showed that he has got some talent… somewhere… as he claimed two important wickets in Jayasuriya and Sangakkara. Flintoff was looking close to his best and perhaps the main disappointment has been Monty, who has struggled to take wickets. Sri Lanka genuinely struggled, and after a mid-innings wobble set England a target of 235 - undoubtedly a below par score and a fair representation of how well England bowled - and fielded - and really signalled an opportunity for England to get some points on the board.
The question marks surrounding England’s batting, though, remained - 235 was a relatively low target - could they hold it together and see the runs off?
The English reply got off to a terrible start as Vaughan was out for a 3-ball duck. Despite it being a sharp chance by Sangakkara standing up to Vaas, Billy Bowden, arguably the best umpire in the World, had nothing short of a shocker, as replays show that Vaughan was nowhere near it, and he was, in fact, caught off his pads. Vaughan trudged off unhappily, but would have been even unhappier 10 runs later when Ed Joyce joined him. There was no mistake there, however, as he was plum LBW. That brought KP to join Bell, and the two of them put on a good partnership to raise England’s hopes to 130/2. But Bell was out again in the 40’s although the nature of the dismissal could be described as unlucky - KP drove a ball straight back at the bowler, Jayasuriya - who had the sense to flick the ball on to the stumps. Bell had grounded his bat, but at the very moment the ball broke the stumps, Bell’s bat lifted and he was fairly dismissed. A freak dismissal, certainly, but it was cheap nonetheless. England then did what they do best - crumble into obvlivion - and they did it in style. KP chipped a Murali doosra back to him, Collingwood walked across his stumps to be LBW and Flintoff holed out to mid on to leave England reeling in the 130’s with 6 down. With Ravi Bopara and Paul Nixon at the crease, it really looked over for England and at that point it was just up to Sri Lanka to finish it off.
But a remarkable 80-run partnership between Nixon and Bopara got England to within a whisker of actually winning. Faced with a run rate of around 10 an over, some remarkable batting from the two, including a reverse-sweep six from Nixon off Murali, it was really impossible to call how it was all going to end. The crowd were going nuts and for a change this World Cup really felt like it had come alive. Nixon ultimately fell trying to lift Malinga through the covers, which left Bopara and Mahmood with the task of scoring 12 off the last over, with Dilhara Fernando to bowl it. That was then reduced to 5 off 3, then 3 off 1.
Everyone watched with baited breath as Fernando ran in to bowl the final delivery, only to watch him not let go of it. Most of the commentators put it down to nerves. I believe he did it on purpose, so as to destroy the concentration of Bopara. I say this due to the smile on Fernando’s face after he did it. His plan worked, however, has Bopara failed to connect with the real final ball, leaving England 2 runs short. Bopara had done enough to secure him the man of the match award and the utmost adulation from any English cricket fan anywhere.
Despite it being a wonderful game of cricket to watch, it really should never have gone down like that. England should never have been in a position where they needed 100 from the last 15 with only 4 wickets in hand and no-one from the top 6 at the crease. Certainly, it was a bowler’s pitch, but there were too many soft dismissals higher up the order and as the game revealed, the reliance on KP and Collingwood to win the game on this occasion didn’t pay off.
The consequence of this loss is that England must now win against Australia if they are to have even the slimmest of chances of getting to the semi-finals. England certainly looked better in this game, and it’s not unlikely that to have such a close game will give us a great deal of confidence. Couple that with our recent victory over the Aussies in the CB Trophy and it doesn’t seem like an impossible task. But Australia are currently at their deadliest best and are routinely scoring 300 runs against better bowling attacks than England, whereas England have struggled in every match. The only thing that will work in our favour is a slight psychological advantage over the Aussies.
As Billy Birmingham might say:
Not an impossible task; but pretty f*cking close to it.
Tags: England, paul-nixon, ravi-bopara, sri-lanka, World-Cup-2007Related Stories
POSTED IN: Cricket
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