“Sometimes you’re very grateful to get random victories like that.” – Aiden Markram
Telford Vice / Cape Town
ARNOS Vale’s spanking new world class floodlights had been turned off and the sun was thinking about coming up to start another perfect day in the potted paradise of Kingstown, St Vincent. So what was that dazzling in the dawn?
It was South Africa’s sheer chutzpah, Nepal’s shimmering commitment, and the sharpness of a contest between teams who had never met before at a ground where only one of them had played previously.
South Africa took on West Indies at Arnos Vale in an ODI, albeit in May 2001. But for much of their innings in a men’s T20 World Cup game on Saturday, Nepal looked like they knew the conditions forwards, backwards, sideways and inside out.
They won the toss and chose to field, and deployed four spinners in an attack of seven to render some of the most celebrated batters in the game close to clueless. South Africa were limited to 115/7. It’s their highest total in the four matches they have played in the tournament but there was little to celebrate.
Nepal needed victory to stay in the running for the Super Eights. And they were in with a shout until the last ball of the match. With two required, Gulsan Jha failed to lay a bat on the ice-cool Ottneil Baartman’s short delivery. The batters tried to scramble a bye to tie the scores and force a super over. Quinton de Kock’s throw to the non-striker’s end hit Jha in the back, sending the ball towards mid-on — where Heinrich Klaasen fielded and flicked onto the stumps with Jha short of his ground to seal South Africa’s one-run win.
That it took this kind of craziness to get the job done left Markram not best pleased. “On the whole tonight we were nowhere near our best,” he told a press conference. “We lacked intensity and conviction in how we wanted to play and in our gameplans. Nepal put us under a lot of pressure. They showed the quality they have and made life really difficult for us. We’ll take lots of learnings from a night like this, as I’m sure they will. They’ll also take a lot of confidence from having us on the ropes.”
As imperfect as South Africa’s display was, it means they will take a perfect record of played four, won four into the Super Eights — not least because Tabraiz Shamsi, who featured in his first match of the tournament and was his team’s only specialist spinner, was in rasping form for his 4/19.
Shamsi dented Nepal’s resolve in the eighth over — his first — by bowling Kushal Bhurtel and Rohit Paudel with deliveries that ragged from well outside off stump. In his fourth over — the 18th, with a gettable 18 needed off as many balls — Shamsi stepped up again to nail Aasif Sheikh’s off bail and have Dipendra Singh Airee caught behind off the glove down leg.
Shamsi’s stellar performance wasn’t what Markram was talking about when he said: “We’ve all watched this game enough; we know funny things can happen. Sometimes you’re very grateful to get random victories like that.”
Too many of those random funny things happened for South Africa’s liking. Reeza Hendricks laboured to 43 off 49, and he wasn’t alone. Only Tristan Stubbs, who made an unbeaten 27 off 18, scored faster than a run a ball. Stubbs was the sole South African who batted with anything like confidence as six wickets crashed for 48 runs inside nine overs.
The malaise was epitomised in the 14th when David Miller trudged off, convinced by what he had seen on the big screen that Nepal’s review would succeed. Miller had swept at a top spinner from Bhurtel that struck him on the back pad. There seemed to be reasonable doubt about where the ball had pitched and what it might have hit unimpeded, so Joel Wilson’s decision of not out was justified. But the gizmos said the ball would have clipped a bail, and the umpire’s call stood.
Miller, confused by the delivery itself and by what he thought he saw on the replay, turned on his heel deep in the outfield and went back to the crease. It’s a rare day when a player as fine and experienced is fooled twice by the same ball.
Two deliveries earlier Bhurtel had had Heinrich Klaasen juggled but held by Karan KC on the extra cover boundary. In Bhurtel’s previous over Markram dragged a leg break onto his stumps. Bhurtel added the wickets of Marco Jansen and Kagiso Rabada in a haul of 4/19 in which both his leg break and his googly were frequently unhittable.
Sandeep Lamichhane, playing his first international since early November because of a conviction for rape of which has since been acquitted, looked like he had never been away when his first two deliveries, perfect leg breaks, ripped past Hendricks’ outside edge. Lamichhane took no wickets, but the pressure he piled on was worth several.
Nepal were similarly impressive at the crease. In the 13th, Sheikh hammered no less a bowler than Rabada not just for six but onto what used to be an airport runway. Talk about being cleared for take-off. In the 19th, Sompal Kami picked Anrich Nortjé’s back-of-the-hand slower ball well enough to also send it screaming into the Caribbean’s dark sky.
All of which was cheered into that sky by the thousands of Nepal fans in the stands. “We feel very grateful to them, the way they come and support us,” Paudel told a press conference. “We wanted to give them a gift today but it didn’t go our way.”
Even so, Paudel felt emboldened enough to say, “The way we played today shows that we belong here.” Few would disagree. Certainly not Markram: “We’re at the same hotel as them, and they’re a great bunch of guys; very friendly, very respectful. The way they approach their game and the cricket they’re playing results in them getting a fantastic fan base. The players deserve it and it’s fantastic to see the fans buying into it. I don’t know too much about Nepal cricket, but looking at it from the outside I would say it’s in a great place and that there are exciting times ahead for them.”
The press, perhaps because Nepal got so close, aimed harsh questions at Paudel. What tricks had he missed? “We missed nothing,” he said. “We played good cricket but still we ended up on the losing side.”
Did the climax of the match mean Nepal had “lost presence of mind? You didn’t relay a message to the batters. Don’t you feel that we are clueless in these situations?”
Paudel fired back a question of his own: “How can I pass on a message in those situations? I couldn’t do it in the middle of the over, when we required two from two.”
Could the batting order have been better? “If we had won the match the batting order would raise no questions.”
As Nepal will learn, small things win games like this. Things like Baartman confirming with the umpire that the penultimate ball of the game, which was short and had sailed out of Jha’s reach by not quite enough distance to be wided for height, was indeed the one allowed bouncer for the over. And things like, as Baartman stood at the top of his run to bowl the final delivery, De Kock shaking his wicketkeeping glove off his throwing hand because he knew the bye was on and that he would have to unload the ball in a hurry.
So the Nepalese shouldn’t be hard on themselves or their team. This hurts because the outcome could easily have been starkly different, and because it condemned the fans and their team to a homeward journey of more than 14,000 kilometres weeks earlier than they would have liked. But there is solace to be taken from Markram’s words, and from what Shamsi told a television interviewer when he collected his player-of-the-match prize. Nepal, Shamsi said, had “played a beautiful game”. Indeed. It dazzled still in the dawn.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 