Windies shock England to tie Twenty20 series

West Indies pulled off a shock win by 25 runs against World Twenty20 Champions England to tie the T20 mini-series. Garey Mathurin pulled off some stunning wickets and bowling to the England batsmen to get amazing figures of 3-9.


On a slow and difficult pitch to bat and perfect for spin bowlers, West Indies muscled their way to a modest total of 113-5 in which the scores should be around 130-140 in this kind of pitch. When West Indies were 24-2 in 5 overs with Bascombe and Charles gone, they began to play out the overs with the odd boundaries. But between 16 and 20 overs, West Indies began to play singles then play boundaries in the end of overs to faze the bowlers with the careful and neat batting of Marlon Samuels with his 35 off 35 balls. Samit Patel and newbie Scott Borthwick were the pick of the bowlers with Patel's opening spin bowling effective with figures of 2-22 in 4 overs and Borthwick's 1-15 in 4 overs shown the amount of dot balls bowled to strangle runs.


The Windies weren't alone at facing the difficulty with the bat with England having Alex Hales down in 3 overs at 12-1. Ben Stokes was the only one that got hold with the bat with his 31 off 23 balls that shown some clever batting with a mix of shots. There weren't any partnerships going and with the required run rate going up by every over, a miracle was needed when England were at 60-7 in 12 overs. Hope was on Jos Buttler's exciting batting and the tail to get to the target but this didn't happen with the restriction of the spin bowlers gave to England with Bishoo and man of the match Garey Mathurin. Bad running was also a big factor in England's loss as they slumped to 88 all out and hardly finishing off their 20 overs. "4 run outs were inexcusable" as Graeme Swann rightly said as the captain of the team.


The Windies got a lot from this win and with lots of confidence playing against Pakistan and Bangladesh in the winter as well as a lot to learn from the youngsters of England and they hope to put on another good performance next time they go out. Preparation maybe good in terms of game planning for the winter tours of Asia but resting might not be with the tour of India only less than 3 weeks away.


Scorecard for England v West Indies 2nd T20 (from ESPN Cricinfo)

Jade Dernbach's run out was the last wicket to gives West Indies a shock victory