Watch cricket video highlights of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 sixth match between England vs Scotland. Venue of the match will be Bridgetown.
In an innings that was cut short by intense rain, Michael Jones and George Munsey led Scotland to 90 runs without conceding a wicket, demonstrating their seriousness about the T20 World Cup. However, the first game against the reigning champions, England, was ultimately marred by bad weather. After Scotland had won the toss and chosen to bat, the match was delayed by fifty-five minutes due to an inconvenient downpour and a wet patch on the field. Just two balls into the powerplay, a considerably stronger storm erupted to end play once again.
Munsey, who had previously been dismissed by a Mark Wood no-ball, and Jones, who was undefeated on 30 from 20 balls, helped Scotland reach 51 for nought. The game was cut down to 10 overs each side by the time the clouds parted and the pitch was thoroughly cleaned. Following the restart, Jones and Munsey scored 39 runs in the final 3.4 overs to take their total to 90 runs without a loss. This meant that England’s revised aim of 109 runs to win was met. However, the rain returned for good right after they were done, making the competition a wash-out.
With the opening ball of the match, Wood found some late inswing, which put Munsey on the hop right away. Munsey, however, was content to take Wood’s fourth delivery, which was outside off stump, and smash it over mid-on for four runs. When Munsey skied a Wood delivery into deep third, with Jos Buttler sprinting out from behind the stumps to grab the catch, he had achieved his sixteenth birthday. However, replays revealed Wood had overstepped by a significant distance, dampening England’s jubilation with the sound of the no-ball siren.
After that fifth over, with Scotland 34 not out, Jones swung Chris Jordan for an 87-meter six that crashed into a solar panel on the roof of the stand beyond deep midwicket. Jones took 15 runs off the over to propel his team to 49 for nought at the end of the powerplay. It was the first of three straight boundaries, the following being a four that was hammered through the covers and the third slicing past midwicket. But before additional rain came and stopped play for over two hours, he and Munsey managed just two more runs.
With 3.4 overs left in Scotland’s innings, play resumed. Adil Rashid was brought in to deliver the eighth over as Jofra Archer and Wood were not available and there was a new limit of two overs per bowler. After Rashid’s opening ball was hit for six by Jones, Munsey added two more runs to the score with a four and a six. Despite Jordan’s costly first over, England continued to rely on his notorious death bowling, as Munsey sent the second ball of his subsequent over the fence at backward square for six runs.
Before Jones hit the penultimate ball through midwicket for four runs to get his team to 90 runs without losing, Rashid was even more frugal in the final over, giving up only four runs off the first five balls. After the restart, the innings wasn’t without incident: Jones held his ground when the Scotland duo scored a second run off Jordan’s final ball, despite his bat sticking in the pitch, and Munsey survived an England review after being caught behind off a googly in Rashid’s opening over. The rain came again at that point, however the ten overs were finished in vain as the rains started.
Archer’s recovery continued with a two-over session, the first of which went for 10 runs, all to Jones, who seized on some additional width to smash his third delivery through the covers for four. Archer had been waiting a long time to play international cricket in his hometown of Bridgetown. With his leg-cutter in hand, Archer produced a much tighter second over, giving up only two singles before concluding with a short, quick ball that touched Jones’ glove as he tried to pull but, thankfully for the batsman, missed Buttler behind the stumps.
After a protracted struggle with ailments, Archer made his professional debut in the second Twenty20 International at home against Pakistan late last month. There, he went 2 for 28 and reached 92 mph/148 kph, which made the already unpleasant rain-affected match even worse. England could only ask what more he might have done in the midst of the weather constraints.
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