England in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746: Visitors win first Twenty20
England won a nail-biting first Twenty20 match against Australia at Adelaide by one wicket.
The home team won the toss and elected to bat first and England chased down the total of 157 off the very last ball of the game.
Australia were not good enough in the field as the in-form English batsman Ian Bell was given two chances at the start of his innings, which proved costly. He was dropped off the very first ball bowled by Shaun Tait by Steve O’Keefe. Bell pulled the ball
and it went straight into the hands of O’Keefe who dropped a sitter.
The second chance was a bit difficult one compared to the first one but it was definitely not the most difficult of chances. Again, the bowler was Tait but the fielder was David Warner.
Steve Davies did not have any luck as he was caught by the Australian captain Cameron White standing at cover position. After his wicket, Kevin Pietersen and Bell took the score to 49.
Bell was eventually dismissed after scoring 27 runs off 17 balls. Pietersen also got a good start but did not carry on making a big score. He was out for 25 after being caught at mid-off by David Hussey.
The English team seemed to have no problem at all and they kept on scoring boundaries in their innings. However, they did lose wickets at regular intervals in the match. Eoin Morgan did not throw his wicket away after getting a start and made 43 runs but
he was caught at cover by Hussey just when England came close to victory.
Morgan’s wicket saw a collapse and England were nine down with four runs to get in the final over. It was the debutant Chris Woakes who kept his cool and scored an unbeaten 19 runs off 15 balls to guide his team to victory.
The pace duo of Brett Lee and Shaun Tait proved to be too expensive for the home team as both the bowlers gave away more than 10 runs per over. A brilliant spell of bowling from Shane http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Watson-c96326 kept the hopes alive for Australia until the last ball.
Watson took four wickets in the match and gave away just 15 runs in his allotted four overs. He was named as the player of the match for his tremendous all-round performance in the match.
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