Sid in the Sharknado
New member
So going back to the discussion point, did England or Pakistan simply fail because of not posting enough? Or was it their ability with the ball? We could go round in circles all day. Both would have loved more runs I'm sure, but both more than capable of winning the game with what they had, both were 60% or so on the predictor with 24 balls left, and both bowled really poorly when it came to the death.
For me, and it's hypothetical, but England have seen out games bowling so much better than that in T20. With a side 4 down needing 57 off 24 balls, I'd back England 7 or 8 times out of 10 to win the game. In fact England were in a better position against SA at 110-3 in the 13th needing 80, than NZ were at 110 in the 17th needing 57, in fact England needed 45 runs from their 17th over when 4 down v SA - so actually NZ's win was tougher than England had v SA, who had 189 on the board.
Is it trite to say that they both didn't have enough runs on the board, and didn't bowl well enough?
At the end of the day, both chases finished with an over to spare, they weren't close. Apart from one over from Jordan (which a - happens, and b - still threw up 2 chances for a catch in the deep even if they were both difficult) I didn't think England bowled overtly badly, but New Zealand pretty much played the chase exactly as you'd want to. One man batted through, another came in and hit a few sixes to close the gap at the end. It's like Sam Curran said (in his stupid voice and his stupid hair) while punditing the Pakistan game, in T20 now they look at how many 6's they need to close out the game, rather than worrying about runs per over or per ball. It's easy to point the finger at Jordan, and to be clear his over was shite, but you have to accept that an over can go for 20 even if somebody bowls well, and there were neither enough runs on the board nor enough wickets taken earlier on to stop that from happening.