NSW together not enough

Well if one can take pains to go through the scorecard of the New South Wales batting, you can see similar scores from the 5 batsmen with a little variation. One would no doubt call that as a team effort. But, one has to satisfy himself only with that. A team work can be considered to be effective only when the effort imposes a challenge on its opposition and not otherwise. There were contributions from the blades of David Warner, Shane Watson, Daniel Smith, Steven Smith and Moises Henriques out of which Shane Watson top scored with 34 for NSW.

One does not require the services of five batsmen to put up a score of 135 on the board in 20 overs. The run rate at which the New South Wales team scored was just above run a ball that included six wide deliveries. As usual, the Cape Cobras stuck with the four bowler formula with four of them bowling their complete quota and Justin Kemp bowling three to fall one over short. Likewise, it would have been wise for Justin Kemp to have gone ahead with 5 bowlers instead of trying Justin Ontong who went for 12 runs from his lone over.

Scoring or rather chasing 136 for victory should not be tough for any team in T20 cricket. Though there have been many instances where such small totals are defended, in majority of the cases, that total happens to be chased down. The openers - Richard Levi and Herschelle Gibbs laid a strong foundation for the Cape Cobras' win at Chennai scoring 43 and 55 respectively. The latter part of the innings was not a tough task for Ontong and Duminy to give it finishing touches. One can see from the scorecard that the Cape Cobras reached the target effortlessly with 16 balls to spare which is quite obvious.

One has to wonder what can a captain of a team do with the scoreboard not having enough runs for the bowlers to take some support from and try doing new things to surprise the batsman. Top bowlers like Nathan Hauritz and Keefe get belted which makes the captain to opt for other bowlers. The only bowlers from New South Wales who could have something to say was Henriques who had the wicket of Levi and was the most economical bowler of the lot giving away runs at just 6.00 runs an over. But, unfortunately, he was the bowler who conceded the winning runs for the Cape Cobras.