The match was played at Westpac Stadium, so we parked up
near parliament and walked to the stadium, getting there with about 20 minutes
to spare. Our seats were up in the nosebleed section, but we had a good view as
we were almost square on to the pitch.
New Zealand lost the toss and were put in to bat by
England. They duly started putting on the runs, with good innings by Guptill
(65) and Williamson (72). De Grandhomme was promoted up the order to bat at 4, as
he’s known to be able to put on a lot of runs in a short period. He came in
when Guptill failed to reach the boundary with another attempted 6, and was promptly
out first ball. Despite this, and with Williamson holding it together for the 4th
wicket stand, they reached 196, which
looked like a defensible total. In T20 these days you need to be up around the
200 mark to feel safe!
England came out swinging, and despite the early loss of
Roy at 14/1, they kept up with the run rate for most of the match.
Unfortunately they leaked wickets - although not as much as we'd have liked, with two dropped catches - and when down into the lower order batsmen,
the total started looking less achievable; in particular when Trent Boult came
in for his second spell and started cleaning out the tail-enders. They needed
25 from the final two overs, which is not impossible in T20. But it proved too much
for the remaining batsmen, and they eventually fell short by 12 runs, handing
victory to the Black Caps.
We drove back to the youth hostel and dropped off Andrew
and Zoe, first making sure that they had beds for the night! That ended their
adventure with us in Wellington, and they caught the ferry the next day to
continue in Abel Tasman, West Coast, Kaikoura and Queenstown.
No comments:
Post a Comment