Champions League Twenty20, 15th Match, League A: New South Wales v Trinidad & To

[weary1969]

Kieron Pollard abuses NSWWhen England first came across Kieron Pollard last winter, he seemed an ok sort of cricketer of the bits and pieces variety.  He chipped in with a few runs and a couple of wickets here and there.

Today he played an innings for Trinidad & Tobago that can only be described as abuse.  Royal Societies have been created for less.  He also managed to make this blog look rather foolish in the process, which I am not too ashamed to admit.

Nothing that happened during the first 16 overs of the T&T innings, chasing 170, was preparation for what followed.

Denesh Ramdin, who had been playing well, was out off the last ball of that 16th over, and it was 120/6.

51 runs required, 4 wickets in hand and just 24 balls to go.

And 12 of those were to be bowled by Brett Lee.

15 balls later, Pollard had won it, Lee’s final over not being required.

Pollard had scored 54 off just 18 deliveries, and 47 from only 11 (eleven!) at the end.

It was the type of onslaught that will make an Australian sports psychologist somewhere an awful lot of money.  Pollard did not use a bat, he walked out with a dungeon, manacles and an assortment of tools.

Here’s the innings in full, the two deliveries in red denoting balls where extras were scored:

. 1 . 4 1 . 1  .w 4 4 6 6 . 6 4 1 4 6 6

The two underlined sections were deliveries bowled by Moises Henriques, who was marmalised so severely that it would be no surprise if he were never seen on a cricket field again. By the end he was bowling pies with the look of a man who was so desperate for the ground to swallow him up that he was handing out shovels.

As well as the man of the match, this innings will win Pollard an IPL contract for 2010.  It all but guarantees T&T a semi-final place, and will have who-knows-what effect on NSW’s prospects.  Somerset will hope that they can take advantage of shell-shock rather than suffer a backlash.  And nobody will want to take on Trinidad & Tobago now.  Even in T20 terms, this was an incredible innings.


Ah love this summary, have to fall out of your chair laughing reading some of these expressions

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