XAVIER VOIGT-HILL: After Hamidullah Qadri and Lewis Goldsworthy turned England to the verge of victory, Australia blasted 40 from the last 16 balls to steal second place in Group B
With 18 balls remaining, England were home and dry.
They had checked out of Kimberley's Diamond Oval for the day to have a well-earned day off after strangling a powerful Australia side in a match that was for all intents and purposes a Group B playoff.
They were gearing up for the formality that would be rounding out the pool stages with a dead rubber against a novice Nigeria side, bowled out for 61 and 57 in their country's two Cricket World Cup games to date.
They had responded to immense pressure with cool heads, and spent an hour squeezing all life out of a scrappy but comfortable Australian chase. When the equation was 100 from 20 overs with eight wickets in hand, England's spinners turned the screw to force Australia to go more than an hour without a boundary.
Forty runs to win from three overs in a low-scoring fixture played between teenagers should not be achieved at any remotely rational level of cricket. But rationality is just not cricket.
Dot. Dot. Six. Six. Four. Six.
Out of nowhere – or, rather, out of two rank full-tosses and two faltering knuckleballs from Blake Cullen – the game roared into life, and Connor Sully booked his place alongside Lloyd Pope, Steve Smith and Shane Warne in England's nightmares.
Sully is a tail-ender, who made his only other Youth ODI appearance all of five days ago. As his team withered against the West Indies, the 19-year-old seamer picked up one run in nine forgettable balls and went to strap on his bowling boots. Today, after his side won the toss and he claimed 2-39, circumstances were rather different.
Those four shots – each meaty and assured strokes that any man a decade his senior would be in awe of – shocked England beyond recognition, just as Nyeem Young had done for the West Indies two days prior.
After that haul, 18 from 12 balls seemed a cakewalk. So too did 10 from six.
Todd Murphy played his part too, with 12 from the last two overs gifting commentators a stunning cameo to riff off rather than merely pointing out that he, like Daniel Vettori, is a spinner who wears glasses.
But it was Sully who turned the game, won the day, drew scores level, nervelessly slashed the winning run off Joey Evison's final delivery, and consigned England to two more weeks traversing South Africa wondering what could have been in a Plate League scrap for ninth place.
England had looked in control after removing Jake Fraser-McGurk
Having opted to bowl first in Monday's clash with the West Indies, England held a decent position during the game through an energised fielding display before breakout star allrounder Nyeem Young turned things firmly maroon. A cool, unflustered belligerence took him to a 33-ball half-century, and gave the otherwise stodgy No.3 Kevlon Anderson a second lease of life as they spearheaded a plunder of 100 runs from the last 10 overs. Such was the disarming shock of this, England may as well have just gone back to the hotel there and then.
Lessons were clearly learned, however. George Balderson was not so fortunate with the coin this time, but spirited display of control from his spinners made pressure do funny things to four-time champions Australia.
As if an England-Australia clash didn't have enough riding on it by sheer virtue of age-old Ashes rivalry, that both sides opened their campaigns by succumbing to spirited West Indies displays essentially turned this into a win-or-bust endeavour for everyone concerned.
Balderson himself handled the early damage, picking off 17-year-old Victoria danger man Jake Fraser-McGurk by swinging one into his pads after just five balls. Australia skipper Mackenzie Harvey eventually steadied the ship, holding out at the crease for almost two hours and reaching a 75-ball fifty to keep his side afloat with wickets in hand and a run rate hovering around what was required, but England's spinners had other ideas.
In a Young Lions team full of spring chickens, off-spinner Hamidullah Qadri is about as close to a veteran as you can find. Born in Afghanistan, raised in Derbyshire, and now off to Kent in the hunt for regular first-team red-ball opportunities, this June will mark three years since he became the County Championship's first child of the 2000s with five match-winning second-innings wickets against Glamorgan.
Today's contribution was easily his most important on a cricket pitch since, doing for Harvey's middle stump on a well-set 65 with a traditional off-break from round the wicket that straightened exquisitely through a confident sweep. The euphoric reaction from his close-knit side told the story of the wicket's importance – Australia would lose Ollie Davies and Liam Scott in the subsequent overs, tighten up entirely as if batting for a draw was a way to manage the pain, and manage just one boundary over an excruciating next hour as England belatedly showed their mettle.
Cornish allrounder Lewis Goldsworthy is at the other end of the spectrum of county experience to Qadri, having only signed a rookie deal with Somerset in September. However, his graduation to the full-time staff is sure to have the Ciderabad faithful licking their lips, especially if Jack Leach and Dom Bess are elsewhere with their England endeavours.
To back up a miserly 10-over spell of 2-28 on Monday, the 18-year-old orthodox spinner again offered nothing, with 42 dots, two boundaries conceded and – in tandem with Qadri – the last-ditch scalps of vice-captains Ollie Davies and Lachlan Hearne.
Goldsworthy came into the attack for what turned out to be his final spell with Hearne and Harvey ahead of the rate and 83 runs deep into their third-wicket partnership. Six deliveries later, Qadri struck the incisive blow, and the collapse was on. By the time he completed his quota for figures of 2-24, Australia had lost four wickets for 29 runs and all realistic hopes of Super League honours.
Ben Charlesworth and Jordan Cox reached their second consecutive 50-plus partnership
England may well reflect on Monday's toss as a missed opportunity, not just for choosing not to apply scoreboard pressure to a West Indies lineup that had only narrowly scraped together 180 in a chase against Australia two days prior.
It was their first game in almost a week, and only the second since arriving in South Africa on January 3 – monsoon conditions washed away their warm-up with Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan squeezed them out for 184 in Hammanskraal two days later.
While openers Ben Charlesworth and Jordan Cox played things fairly sensibly on that occasion, batting through the powerplay uninterrupted and putting 50 on the board, both were visibly cramping up fairly early, and wicketkeeper Cox in particular did not look his usual flowing self after 50 overs in the unfamiliar dry heat of Kimberley.
Each of the top four passed 20, clearly looking to keep up with the West Indies' tempo and up the rate at the end, but where Anderson stayed in and Young swung confidently, England ultimately withered, with a top score of 38 from Tom Clark and a loose slide from 120 for 2 to 174 for 9 around spontaneous showers rapidly taking the game away.
Though Cox again left much to be desired through a stilted 41-ball effort of 25, today Charlesworth demonstrated much more sanguine patience as England were inserted by Mackenzie Harvey. The Gloucestershire regular collected 40 from 44 during the first-wicket partnership of 67 with Cox, and he intelligently shifted down the gears to see off an early cameo spell from perceived danger man Tanveer Sangha and keep himself in the middle for another 20 overs, where he also added 64 alongside Jack Haynes.
The nature of his dismissal was the only real blip in his display – after 99 chanceless balls, Australia finally lucked into something when the 19-year-old wafted a pull somewhere near a short loosener from Connor Sully and only found Sangha zipping around the fine leg boundary.
It was a shot that made him the third man to fall in five overs – Haynes had been caught attempting an expansive slog sweep to become Sangha's sole victim of the day, and Lewis Goldsworthy had nicked the first ball he faced (and one so far outside the off stump there was no need to play at) into the gloves of Patrick Rowe.
But this England outfit prides themselves on their character, and Charlesworth playing an innings of two halves – each appropriate for the context of the innings – had afforded Dan Mousley (51 not out from 44) and Kasey Aldridge (32 not out off 25) something of an opportunity to display it at the end, adding 79 in the last 10 overs.
Easy as it might be to think the final total of 252 reads like a middling 50-over score from 2002, only once in 15 Under-19 World Cup fixtures had England failed to defend a first-innings of above even 230. But nobody bothered telling Connor Sully.
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