Lopsided matches are not rare occurrences in Cricket. Lopsided matches are also usually not interesting to watch, because, well, they are lopsided. But when two very lopsided Cricket matches are played on the same day, then it is indeed a rare occurrence. And mildly interesting too, because, well, it is just rare and most people find rare events interesting. So perhaps it is appropriate to have an article written on this rare event, dissect it statistically, and just poke some fun at the losing team.
Match 1: Netherlands vs Canada
This first is a one-day match between Netherlands and Canada. These are the so-called “minnows”, the fringe teams to which most of the Cricket fans usually don’t pay much attention to – perhaps no one in their respective countries either. But even minnows have their moments of glory, and Netherlands for sure had theirs in this match. To make it even more embarrassing for Canada, they were playing at home. But then, do people in Canada really follow Cricket? Do they even follow any sport apart from Ice Hockey?
Anyway, coming back to the match, here is what happened: Netherlands won the toss, and decided to field. Timm van der Gugten opened the bowling for Netherlands, and demolished the Canadian innings straightaway. In his first spell of 7 overs, Gugten claimed the wicket of the top 5 batsmen of Canada, who fell for scores of 0, 1, 0, 3, 0. Two of those were golden ducks. At one point of time, Gugten’s bowling line read 4-1-9-5. Such dominant was his bowling performance that Canada’s win probability sunk to 0 within 2 overs, and it remained in the basement for the rest of the match. Pieter Seelaar took care of the tail, and Canada was bowled out for 67. This isn’t the lowest first inning ODI score – by a big margin – but the manner in which Canada capitulated, that too at home, must have indeed been humiliating. Netherlands cantered to the target in the 11th over, and Stephan Myburgh even had the audacity of hitting a half century even when chasing such a short target.
Match 2: England vs Australia
Now these two teams are far from being minnows, Australia‘s recent fall from grace notwithstanding. And England are the in-form team, what with there latest Ashes victory. But just as minnows have their moment of glory, the giants also have their moment of downfall, and so this time it was England’s turn to bite the dust.
The final scoreline of Australia 248/6, England 209/6 may fool the naive reader to assume that this was just another one-day match. But this was a T20 match being played in England. Wait – played in England? Didn’t such high scoring matches took place only in the dust-bowl tracks of India? Oh well never mind.
Australia’s hero turned out to be Aaron Finch, who hit 156 off just 63 deliveries, smashing 11 boundaries and 14 sixes. That’s 128 runs in boundaries alone. Hitting a century in a T20 match is a remarkable feat. Hitting 150 is an even more remarkable feat. Hitting a double century would have been totally awesome, and absolutely demoralizing for the English bowlers. Thankfully for them, Finch got bowled out in the 18th over, otherwise who knows what more carnage might have happened.
To give credit to England, they fought valiantly with the bat, but as the win probability graph shows, they never had any chance. And when batsmen swing bats like crazy, ball does cross the boundary occasionally. So some minor consolation to England for crossing the 200 score, but perhaps they just wasted some of their energy that they could have reserved to get the better of Finch in the next match.
So to conclude: two very lopsided matches. One a T20 match, other a one-day match. One in which the team batting first lost badly, the other in which the team fielding first lost badly. The manner of the lopsidedness of the two matches make it a very unique day in the history of Cricket indeed.