Last ball thriller sees New Zealand beat England by three runs

New Zealand successfully shut down England's prospective match-winning position to win a thrilling encounter by three runs in their ICC World Cup Under-19 match at Lincoln No 3 near Christchurch today.

In reality, this was a game England should have won.

New Zealand knew that, England knew that, and the good-sized crowd that sat fixed to the spot while the home team came back from falling over a precipice, climbing up a narrow strand of mountain rope and pouring en masse over the cliff top to storm the English defences, knew it too.

For starters, New Zealand's score of 205 when batting first and being dismissed in the 50th over should not have been enough.

It was only that high as the result of a remarkable innings of 54 off 41 balls by opening batsman Jesse Ryder, who so dominated the scoring that when he was the fourth batsman out only 64 runs had been scored.

A significant feature of that however was New Zealand were still in the 13th over. The new batsmen had time to play themselves in before getting on with building the innings.

It was just as well that they did as England's slower bowlers, Gordon Muchall and Paul McMahon did a superb job in conceding only 62 runs in their 20 overs through the middle stages of the innings.

A stand of 53 runs for the sixth wicket by Brook Hatwell and Ian Sandbrook recovered the position a little for New Zealand but run outs further down the order minimised New Zealand's ability to score around the 230-240 mark that seemed reasonable, even after the disappointing start they had.

England started their chase poorly. They lost key batsmen Kadeer Ali and Nicky Peng in the first two overs and, after 20 overs, were four wickets down, just as New Zealand had been.

The loss of Nick Compton for 26 was a significant blow because he looked set to play a big innings. He only departed when lifting his foot for a fraction of a second to be swiftly stumped by Sandbrook off Rob Nicol's bowling.

Kyle Hogg scored 27 after he and Samit Patel had revived the innings but then both were out when attempting to score through areas they had previously plundered. On both occasions they tried, the fieldsmen were better placed to make the catches.

The New Zealanders took advantage of their departure to slow the scoring rate and while that lessened Ross Taylor's bowling options later in the innings, it meant he had more time to play with.

Into the last 10 overs 47 runs were needed by England who had four wickets in hand.

Ryder, a strictly part-time bowler came in to bowl the 43rd over, his first of the innings, and he did a steady job by conceding only 11 runs off the 12 balls he bowled.

But as the pressure went on, the English faltered first when after a seventh wicket partnership of 61 runs that should really have been the winning of the game, Mark Pettini's fine first innings of the tournament ended when he was caught in the 49th over from Richard Sherlock's bowling for 36 runs.

It was left to Stephen Pope and Tim Bresnan to try and bring England home but with two balls left, and four runs needed, Peter Borren, a quickish medium-pacer, bowled Pope for 25 leaving Chris Gilbert in the 'zero or hero' position of scoring the four that would win the game.

Unfortunately for England he wasn't able to get bat to ball and the game was lost by three runs.

Borren finished with two for 34 from his 10 overs and while there's never any doubt where he fields during a game because of the constant barrage of enthusiasm he gives his 10 team-mates it was the New Zealanders who were cheering and yelling at his feat at the end of the day.

It seemed that New Zealand's concession of 15 wides was going to come back and bite them but they survived with plenty to think about before meeting South Africa on Wednesday.

England now face a difficult task against Australia on Wednesday.