New Zealand beat South Africa

Daily Result: £539.78

I'm pretty sure there isn't anyone in the world who is betting on the cricket world cup who hasn't noticed that many of the games are following a bit of a pattern and today's was no exception. It's tempting to say New Zealand won the toss, and therefore the match but it would be a little disingenuous. An advantage it was yes, but the Black Cap bowlers also put in a fantastic performance to help seal the victory.

Unusually I took an outright punt on the toss news today as I felt the 2.38 about New Zealand was just too attractive not to. I explained my reasons on the Betfair forum before the game but basically because of the prices my thinking was if New Zealand won the toss there would be a much bigger price move in my favour than the move against me would be if South Africa won the toss. As the toss was an even money proposition I convinced myself I'd found a value punt and went for it. New Zealand duly won the toss and their price went to 2.1x before the match started. A pleasing if lucky start.

Black Cap openers Franklin and Bond then made it an even better start taking a wicket each in the opening overs. The New Zealand price crashed and I never really looked back for the rest of the day. There was clearly a bit of moisture in the pitch and as overused a phrase as it is some of the deliveries were simply unplayable. World class batsmen not even able to edge the ball! The result was that after 10 overs South Africa had managed a tournament low of just 12 runs! The most amazing thing about the whole situation though was that South African captain Graeme Smith made it clear he would have batted first given the choice! The mind boggles...

I made a mistake of getting out of some of my New Zealand backs too early but managed to pick up some more profit during the innings as South Africa got bogged down and continued to lose wickets. So tied up were they by the Black Cap attack that by the start of the 45th over they'd only scored 6 boundaries in the entire innings.

Fleming is often described as the best international cricket captain in the world and did this claim no harm today through some inspired decisions in the field. The most remarkable of which was bringing on 7th choice bowler Craig McMillan near the end of the South African innings! There were barely disguised guffaws from commentators but McMillan duly obliged by taking a wicket. Commentators backtracked but stressed he'd done his job and it was time for the front line bowlers. Fleming disagreed, bough McMillan on again and eventually gave him 5 overs in which he took 3 wickets for 23 runs - a career best performance which continued to stun the commentators who simply joked each over that surely it would be his last! Afterwards Fleming nonchantly explained:

"He has the ability to just grab a wicket from anywhere. There's a few subtleties in there that do the trick." Quite!

Anyway, New Zealand came out needing just 194 to win and it was immediately obvious that the pitch was playing better than it had been first thing in the morning. The sun had helped to dry it out and despite losing some wickets the run rate was never going to pressure the batsmen and they made the chase quite easily - with the help of several dropped catches - winning by 5 wickets with 10 runs to spare. Although not top scoring McMillan's 38 not out was good enough to wrap up a well deserved Man of the Match award.

New Zealand's victory sees them through to the semi finals and also sets up a cracking match on Tuesday between South Africa and England with the winner of that match also likely to make the semis.