It has just gone past 6pm when Dom Scott takes the ball for the first over. This is real IPL captaincy stuff from Leo Connelly; left arm orthodox with a new ball, hoping for grip and turn on a wicket with a rabid green patch half way down it. Big claps from the field as Dom grips the ball, and a voice rings out:

‘Where would you rather be, lads?”

I am neutral at this stage. Not enough of the game has passed for me to remember my revulsion for it; I am still in the heady vapors of seeing people I like, and have fallen for the lie that cricket represents. Let’s call it a five out of ten.

Dom and CRS start off tight and controlled. It is everything that you expect from them, and they are playing all the hits. Pace changes, line changes, lateral movement. There are some good bits of fielding from the guys in the ring, and their big opener with the big swing is simply not getting the ball. When he gets out early, the game looks like it could be ours for the taking.

And then, out of nowhere like some kind of hivemind glitch— a bluescreen virus that rips through the mental wiring of this team— catches start getting dropped. It is relentless. High swirling ones at midwicket are dropped. Flatter ones that go to long-on are dropped. Top edges are dropped. And the virus keeps spreading, toxic fingers burying themselves in the fielding tissue of the team. Balls go through long barriers. The ball spins off the grass and beats fielders in the deep.

And with almost every injury, there is insult. Every drop or misfield that comes off a thick edge of a wildly flashing blade is followed by a resounding, thunderous middle that batters the ball into a sidescreen or bush.

The team is replete with spinners — everywhere you look, you have someone who can turn the ball, both in and out— all of different release points, and velocities and levels of turn. Over the wicket, around the wicket, flatter, loopier, quicker, keeper up, keeper back, it doesn’t matter. Everything is disappearing; nothing is going right for the Pirates.

‘Where would you rather be, lads?’

Anywhere but here. In Alligator Alcatraz. Stuck on the M6 in hours of traffic. Signing up to be Oleksandr Usyk’s next fight. The thoughts wander to just how many these guys are going to put up. It could be in the low 200s. If we field like we’re fielding, it could be in the mid 200s. Their opener, Sahil Irfan gets to a hundred, and he looks like he’s coming after Max Gumpert and Nicko Dowell, here on our home ground. He is swinging at everything, connecting with most, and getting away with it all.

And then Leo Connelly’s voice rings out.

‘It’s a long game, lads, and the momentum can shift any time. All it takes is a few good balls, and a batting order can come crumbling down.’
Leo is a momentum merchant. It is his favourite thing. A man so bedazzled by optimism and the power of doing, it is utterly unsurprising that he can believe in clawing your way out of a pit with nothing more than determination. When he says these words to us, he genuinely, truly, honestly believes it. He believes that this marauding team in front of us can be shackled and brought to heel.

Callum comes on, a blip in the storm of spinners, and he is immediately golden. It’s wheels and shapes, and they can’t really get anywhere near him. It is a tiny hiccup of momentum. Even his second over, which does go for runs, is a momentum shift, because it is even streakier from the batsmen than before, and he is causing all sorts of problems and you can start to see the cracks beginning to show.

When Dom comes back on, and smothers them for just three runs in his over, it is another minute momentum shift. He will end his 4 overs having gone for 17 runs, a near perfect display of suffocating, metronomic left arm bowling; a vice grip that squeezes and squeezes over sixteen deliveries that Sinjun’s batsmen find it impossible to escape from.

When Joey comes back on and has Harry Bray snaffle their number 3, it is more than a little shift. There is a tangible, ephemeral shift somewhere; maybe it is in the minds, or the fingers or the belief. You can feel the metaphorical gates start to swing open.

This fielding unit, which has, to this point, been ragged, starts to knit itself together. Sean helps run out their centurion, and finally, finally, his luck has run out. He has been dropped on 2, on 7, on 15, and he has put us to the sword, and now he is gone. The game is turning, you can smell it. Joey Anderson takes an absolute blinder— one handed, falling, tumbling, ball almost gone past him— to round off a three wicket over for CRS, and the team is humming. A daunting 151-1 is now 161-5.

Connelly reverse-hands a runout to completely fox a batsman who has completely stopped running to the bowler’s end, and you start to wonder what is going on? This is a team that can do no wrong. The Pirates are now sharks with the smell of blood in their noses, and they are hunting with an intent, a viciousness that wasn’t there before.

Sean McGurn, a man who simply refuses to be alphaed at any point, fuming at the plaudits heading to Joey Anderson for his catch, decides to take his next chance one-handed as well. He runs from long on, covers twenty or so yards, sticks a mitt out, sticks it, and carries on running roughly another 100 metres. Sinjun Grammarians, who were looking up at a leviathan score, and now staring down the barrel of a sub 9 rpo score.

And that is exactly what happens. Joey and Tunnacliffe, rip and rag and turn their way through the torso and then the tail of this batting unit. Plough need 175 to win.

In the frantic changeover, a mad rush against the clock and over rates, Connelly calls out the batting order. I am to open with Sean.
My batting brain has never been clearer, the implied edict handed down to me never more simple. Get Sean on strike, enjoy the show.

Sean bats with a long handle and a long blade. When they say some batters’ bats just look bigger, it is true in Sean’s case. The fourth ball of the first over, having seen precisely two deliveries, he uses his long handle and long blade to absolutely smear their opening bowler for six.

We face their other opener, a quick skiddy bowler who bowls yorker length religiously, and the tendrils of worry start to form, because he is tough to get away, and even McGurn can’t launch him. How many of his overs can we afford to play out, what is the run rate doing?
Sean goes to work on the other opener again, and I am spending most of my time telling him to save his legs as he mows him over midwicket and over his head for repeated boundaries. It’s a thankless task I do, but I remind myself that someone has to do it.

And then, because the game is all about momentum, and the game is never easy or fair, they have their breakthrough. Their first change bowler sets Sean up with a brilliant package of three ludicrously wide wides in a row, getting inside his head with all the free runs. When he bowls one vaguely closer to the stumps, bang, suddenly Sean is gone.

I get out a few overs later, having nudged and nurdled, trying to launch one over cover. It was the wrong shot, at the wrong time. We are now two down, and the biggest of all Tuna is in.

Three overs pass with no boundaries, and the run rate starts its inexorable march upwards. We are 63 off 9 overs, and we need 112 off the last 11. Ten an over, for that many overs looks difficult. The sun is setting, and the pink ball is starting to glow.

Simon Crane gets out for a really well compiled 22, filled with hard run twos and picked out boundaries, and Leo strides in. And there it is, the fizz, the magic, the hiss of something in the air. At the boundary, we are too far away to hear what is being said between these two, but something is happening, and the game lurches again.

There is an immediate shot of nitro. Leo hits his first ball for four, and the steam valve is about to blow; you can practically hear the high pitched whistle, and the shaking of the bolts. The next over is Tunnacliffe’s turn, as he wrist whips Hafeez for three fours, and now it’s 14 off the over, and the game is all about momentum, and Jesus Christ, has Leo been right all along, and now the target is doable, and is ten an over on?

And then two overs later, there it is; the shift, the bursting of the dam, the parry, the counter, the game. Tunnacliffe starts with a massive six, and then Leo just… sinks his teeth in. The two sixes he hits are absolutely monstrous; you can hear the fizz like an angry hornet as it screams past you and lands in the middle of the other game that is going on. Twenty one runs off the over, and it is game on.

There’s a change of bowler, but Sinjun are haemorrhaging runs in every way that you can. The next over goes for 11 without a single boundary; it’s all push-and-run stuff by the two physically fittest men in the team. Sinjun Grammarians don’t know what to do, where to look, or how the runs are going to stop.

But cricket is not easy, is it? There is no straight road in this miserable game, no neon lighted path to the endzone. It’s a scam, it’s a tease, it’s pain and heartbreak.

The 19th over goes for four runs, and suddenly, the game that was iced is not iced any more, and its nine required off the last over. Phones are out on the boundary, checking what happens in the case of a tie; nobody wants to be ‘99 South Africa, or ‘19 New Zealand.
The first ball is a tight single, but a good single, and Leo Connelly makes his ground. Not according to the umpire. He is given out, and he is swarmed by 11 players in maroon, and he cannot believe it, and cricket is a cruel game. What can you do? He is so angry that he doesn’t walk back to us at the boundary immediately, but goes off the other way.

Dom Scott is in. And then he too, is run out, sacrificing himself to scrape 2 runs. He is out, and there are no complaints here. At least about the umpiring on that one. Lots of complaints about the tension. Seven required off three.

And then Tunna’s big backswing, and his big bat, and his nerves of steel and his wrists of rubber smoke the next ball for four. Three off two.
The next ball is dug out, and as it squirts away, they scamper through for one. Two to win. One to tie. Joey Anderson steps up to the plate. What a time to face your first ball of the match. What pressure. What a test of who you really are.

The moment the ball comes out of the bowler’s hand, it’s clear that it’s too short. Joey slaps it, flat batted over the bowler’s head. He hasn’t got all of it, but it doesn’t matter. The long on and long off are too far away, and they’re not attacking the ball enough, and we know, and they know, and now we’re just going through the motions because we have to, and they get to the ball, but it’s too late, and Joey Anderson has ice in his veins, and Leo is right about momentum, and then suddenly, in the dying of the light, in the orange sun and the long shadows, it’s two off the last ball, and it’s the quarter finals next week.

Where would you rather be, lads?

Match report from Prithu Banerjee