Daily Result: £292.70
Sri Lanka eased past New Zealand today in a textbook 6-wicket victory. They took early wickets, contained in the middle overs and then set about showing how to properly chase a small total - a lesson England could do with learning after yesterday's woeful effort against Bangladesh.
New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming won the toss and took the decision to bat first. Not the worst of decisions but a case could be made that it lost them the match. Because Vaas used the slight moisture still in the pitch to provide his usual party trick of early wickets and the Black Caps were under pressure at 4/2 before they'd really started. I pointed out on the Betfair forum at the start of the innings that Vaas had got Fleming out 6 times in 94 balls so it wasn't a total shock when he made it 7 in 98 balls!
Struggling to rebuild the innings New Zealand were on just 18 runs after 10 overs - the lowest of the tournament so far - and despite a good effort to get back in the game Murali's magic later in the innings meant the Black Caps just about scraped a respectable score. Well under par though. And never likely to be defended.
So out came Sri Lanka chasing 220 to win. Not disimilar to yesterday's match where England came out chasing just 144. Both teams had contained the opposition to low scores and both were clear favourites to knock the runs off.
But what a difference in the approach! And one that highlights the difference in quality of the relative top orders. Whereas England came out and struggled to score, let the run rate rise (though it was never a real danger) and heaped the pressure on themselves by getting bogged down the Sri Lankans came out, smacked the ball around, quickly reduced the required run rate from 4.4 to under 4 and then just strolled to the total with the pressure off. Sure they lost some wickets on route but the batsmen coming in faced very little pressure because of the good positive start by the top order batsmen. None of the English negativity. Just positive stroke play that eased the pressure and set up a comfortable win. And put the shine on a text book ODI win. Early wickets... containing economic bowling... positive batting early doors... sensible batting thereafter... comfortable win.
All of which resulted in my picking up nearly £300 in profit. Pleased with the result but the truth is I didn't trade the game particularly well. Made a few costly mistakes and missed some of the juicier price movements. Still, with another £300 or so banked towards the wedding funds I can't really complain. Would definitely have settled for it at the start of play and maybe next time I'll catch the prices a little better!
2 comments:
How do you come to the conclusion 220 is a small score. Having played and watched a lot of cricket its maybe below par but by no means small!!!
You're right. Was in a big hurry and perhaps "small" wasn't the best choice of words in the opening paragraph although obviously refers to the 180 too. I used "under par" elsewhere and that is more accurate in the case of the Lankans. Especially considering the spreads were 290 to buy at the start. The point stands though.
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