Moral Victory for Ireland? - Date 03/15/2007
Most of us would have considered Ireland - Zimbabwe match a low profile one, and wouldn't even have cared to take a look at the scores - but some of us who did, would agree with me on one point - it was by far the best world cup 2007 match to watch (or follow the scores online) - Frankly I didn't care about the match either but when I wanted to update my world cup page on the web site I went ahead to check the scrores and at that time Ireland had scored 221/9 wickets and Zimbabwe was batting at 147/5 in 33 overs. Clearly it looked like Zimbabwe will make it with 5 wickets in hand,and 74 more runs to go in 17 overs - the required runrate was around 4.35 - quite an achievable target - but hats of to Ireland bowling and fielding attack!! They made it happen there were 3 run outs in last 5 wickets, what a turning point!! Though it still looked like Zimbabwe will make it when Zimbabwe scroed 9 runs in 44th over with a fall of wicket- but after that it was all down hill as the new batsman in GB Brent couldn't get his act together, with only only 1 run coming in 45th and 2 in 46th-47th, and he was sent back to pavillion in the 47th over. Again a new batsman on the field and Zimbabwe only managed to score one more run with a fall of 2 wickets in the 48th over!!! Zimbabwe now required 9 runs from last over with only one wicket in hand, but they did start off good with scoring 8 runs in first 5 ball, it came all down to 1 run required in 1 ball with 1 wicket in hand - doable, but the last ball came with a runout - and Zimbabwe was all out for 221 and Ireland managed to tie the match - what a spirit!!! Only the third match in World cup which resulted in tie - I would say it is a great moral victory for Ireland and an amazing team performance !!! |