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After a well earned rest by the players, the first semifinal is in the books!

#2 foreignfield (3.935) beats #8 eugene (3.396) by 0.539 points

Foreingfield's bowlers put in a phenomenal display as a group taking 16 wickets combined (4 each for Shakib and Tait, 3 each for Ngidi and Bond, and Oram chipping in with 2 as well), and only one of his bowlers went for more than 5 an over. Tendulkar and Shakib had the main batting contributions, as Shakib put in a terrific all-round performance.

While eugene's batting was awesome, his bowler really let him down. Although Ajmal took 5 for 90 at 4.5 an over, none of the other bowlers could match the damage that foreignfield's attack did, and eugene went down by a small margin in a very high scoring thriller. Eugene's top 3 nearly threatened to take the game away with Guptill, Dilshna, and Williamson all scoring over 100 runs at run a ball striker rates. Although Morgan and Russell did damage, eugene's tail added just a handful of runs and consumed too many balls.

A real nail-biter once again at the mundane ZCF Sports Club ground. The first semi-final was delayed for several days while the authorities put up the necessary equipment to continue the tournament under lockdown restrictions. The first ever cricket match without umpires on the field went through quite smoothly although Shakib's antics while appealing to the cameramen a hundred yards away caused the odd chuckle in the commentary box; someone should tell him that, yes, they have a zoom on their cameras.

foreignfield put on a solid batting display that was evenly matched with the threat and accuracy of eugene's bowlers, Saeed Ajmal in particular. But that Dilshan put down an easy chance off the bowling of Trent Boult with Tendulkar in single figures didn't help team eugene. Andre Russell went for plenty as Shiv Chanderpaul and Misbah stepped on the accelerator in the middle overs before both fell prey to Ajmal's wrong-un. Shakib did his best to push the score along, but boundaries were hard to come by and Jacob Oram couldn't get going at all at the other end. Still 254 is very much a par score under these conditions, as soon became clear during eugene's reply.

Guptill and Dilshan set off like a train, and Shane Bond came in for some punishment in his opening spell. But once Ngidi and Tait had removed both openers, beating them for sheer pace, runs started to dry up with Shakib tying the batsmen down with his accurate left-arm spin and Jacob Oram equally difficult to get away. Kane Williamson played a true captain's knock as wickets started to fall around him, and for a while it looked as if he would steer his side home, seemingly cruising towards his century, when Misbah brought back Shane Bond who immediately responded with a vicious lifter that took the shoulder of Williamson's bat, the sharp deflection spectacularly caught one-handed and inches off the turf by the true little master behind the stumps, Tatenda Taibu, diving at full stretch. This superb piece of wicket-keeping proved to be the turning point. Andre Russell was promoted ahead of Michael Hussey in a desperate attempt to up the run rate, but when Ngidi had him caught on the boundary not even Michael Hussey, one of the coolest heads in the game, could marshall eugene's long tail home.

foreignfield 254-7 (50 overs) beats eugene 250-9 (50 overs) by four runs.

I must admit I never really thought about how many runs my bowlers would need to score with the bat. Ultimately my downfall.

eugene wrote: ↑

Fri May 08, 2020 6:19 pm

I must admit I never really thought about how many runs my bowlers would need to score with the bat. Ultimately my downfall.

Looking at Kriterion's numbers, I thought you would beat me under my simulation where the batting of the tailenders does not come into the equation at all (unless all the batsmen fail of course), but surprisingly that was not the case. Your batting performance taken alone (from no. 1 to 7), was the best in the tournament so far: with Russell promoted ahead of Hussey to make it more real your batting was worth 320 runs, but my bowlers only gave away 185 runs in return. In my innings my batting (262 runs) and your bowling (246 runs conceded) were more evenly matched.

In fact, I made a slight mistake when calculating the runs given away by my bowlers (subtracting a decimal point too much for wicket no. 9); that makes it even closer as you end up with 252.5 runs (rounded to 253).

foreignfield 254-7 (50 overs) beats eugene 253-9 (50 overs) by one run.

This was the sixth match of the series and the third match that was too close to call, not due to the law of averages but resulting from quite different scenarios and batting & bowling cards.

BRM how's your team? Mine are still keen

rusty17 wrote: ↑

Mon May 18, 2020 12:04 am

BRM how's your team? Mine are still keen

I'm guessing the teams would have become "rusty" by now

Ahahah CA that was so bad it was good

Clearly ZC are organising this tournament. Nobody including the players know when the next match is being played and the points system changes frequently.

I'm still keen to know though, all the effort in the draft

Yeah let’s finish this up

I’m ready for another draft