Marylebone Cricket Club T20I Tri-Series, 2018: Round-up

The Marylebone T20I tri-series was held on 29 July 2018. Marylebone Cricket Club, Nepal and Netherlands were the three teams that participated in this tournament. This tournament was played in a round-robin format with all of the three games played on the same day. Furthermore, all of these games were played at the Lords in London.

However, the rain interruptions spoiled the fun of the event. While two out of the three games had to be shortened, one game yielded no result. Nepal and Netherlands won one game each. Marylebone Cricket Club under Mahela Jayawardene lost both the games that it played. Since the last game between Nepal and Netherlands didn’t produce a result, both the teams shared one point each. Nepal was the ultimate winner of the tri-series courtesy a better run rate. Here is how things proceeded in this series:

Marylebone Cricket Club vs the Netherlands – 1st Match

This match was reduced to six overs per side due to rain. MCC won the toss and opted to field first as it is much easier chasing in these sort of games. Batting first, Netherlands batsmen went hard and put up 72 runs for the loss of 3 wickets in 6 overs. Although two of their crucial batsmen got out for a duck, their opener Tobias Visee was a class act. He was unbeaten on 58 runs which came off just 23 balls, which was also about 80% of the teams’ score. Wesley Barresi scored 11 off 7 balls towards the end.

MCC couldn’t score the runs quickly in the chase despite having wickets in hand. The in-form Varun Chopra only managed to get 27 runs off 17 balls. He should have attempted scoring at a quicker pace. Although Jonathan Trott tried hard with 21 runs off 11 balls, these efforts weren’t really sufficient as MCC fell short of the target by 10 runs.

Brief Scores:

NED: 72/3 in 6 overs (Tobias Visee 58*, Barresi 11, Mark Watt 1/9)

MCC: 62/2 in 6 overs (V Chopra 27, J Trott 21, Fred Klaassen 1/12)

Marylebone Cricket Club vs Nepal – 2nd Match

These were back to back games for the MCC. Nepal won the toss and opted to field first. MCC’s skipper Mahela Jayawardene decided to tweak a little with the batting order this time around. He opened the innings for his team. However, this upset the balance of the lineup completely. Both Varun Chopra and Matt Coles didn’t feature in this game. Mahela scored 24 runs off 16 balls but found no support from the other end. The next highest score was just 6 runs which means that the MCC would end up with quite a low score. They put on 40 runs for the loss of 4 wickets in 6 overs.

Nepal finished this chase off quickly which assisted them to get a better net run rate. Only Anil Sah was dismissed in during the chase after he scored 9 off 9 balls. With 16 runs from Khakurel and 12 runs from Malla, they bagged a 9-wicket win with 8 balls to spare. Douthwaite picked the only wicket of the innings.

Brief Scores:

MCC: 40/4 in 6 overs (Mahela Jayawardene 24*, Moor 6, Kami 2/8)

Nepal: 41/1 in 4.4 overs (Khakurel 16*, Malla 12*, D Douthwaite 1/7)

Nepal vs the Netherlands – 3rd Match

This game ended up being a draw due to a rain interruption. Nepal won the toss and put the Netherlands into bat first. The Netherlands scored 174 for the loss of 4 wickets in 16.4 overs before the rain interrupted. Barresi with 44 runs was the highest scorer till then.