A Day After a First-Ball Duck, David Miller Hits Four Sixes and No Fours — Belfast Wolves Beat Amsterdam Flames and Go Second

Cricket rarely gives a side the chance to answer a bad day quickly. Belfast Wolves got one. On Wednesday at The Village they lost three wickets in four balls to Craig Young and were bowled out for 107; David Miller made a first-ball duck, Glenn Maxwell a two-ball one, and Dublin Guardians — winless until then — beat them with 33 balls to spare. On Thursday, on the same ground, they played Amsterdam Flames, level with them on seven points.

They won by five wickets with an over left. Mark Adair took 3 for 25 and was named Player of the Match; Saurabh Netravalkar and Fred Klaassen bowled eight overs between them for 31 runs and four wickets; and when the chase stalled at 100 for 4, Miller made 42 not out from 26 balls without hitting a single four. Belfast are second on nine points. Amsterdam Flames, who arrived on a three-match winning run, are fourth.

Belfast's start with the ball was exactly what a side bowling first wants. Netravalkar had Yuvraaj Samra caught by Chapman in the second over, and Adair had Steven Smith caught by Miller with the first ball of the third. Amsterdam were 9 for 2.

Then came the best cricket Amsterdam played all day. Bas de Leede and Curtis Campher added 61 in 29 balls — de Leede had 36 of the first 50 of them — and the powerplay closed at 56 for 2. De Leede hit five fours and two sixes in 20 balls. For a few overs Belfast's attack had no answer at all; Chris Jordan's three overs eventually cost 44.

What Belfast did next is the reason they won. Matthew Humphreys had Campher caught by Jordan off the last ball of the seventh over. Jordan, of all people, then removed de Leede — caught by Adair — at 77. Humphreys had Tim David caught by Klaassen at 91. And Klaassen had Michael Bracewell lbw (Amsterdam reviewed; it was struck down) and Jordan Neill caught by Stirling. From 70 for 2, Amsterdam were 102 for 7 in the thirteenth over: five wickets for 32 runs in 36 balls.

The lower order did well to find 39 more. Scott Edwards made 20 before Adair bowled him in the seventeenth, Tim Pringle finished 15 not out, and David Payne's 10 took them to 141 before he was caught by Chapman off the last ball of the innings — Adair's third wicket. Netravalkar finished 4-0-15-2 and Klaassen 4-0-16-2. Across eight overs from the two of them, Amsterdam scored 31.

Belfast's chase was never in serious danger and never entirely safe. Paul Stirling hit five fours in a 16-ball 26 before Jordan Neill bowled him at 35 in the fourth over, and the powerplay closed at 51 for 1. After that the scoring slowed. Harry Manenti batted 34 balls for 33; Tucker made 16 and was caught off Pringle; Chapman survived an Amsterdam review in the twelfth over and was caught by Bracewell off Aryan Dutt two balls later. At 100 for 4 after Manenti fell in the fourteenth, Belfast needed 42 from 39 balls.

David Miller had come in at 85 for 3. He had made nought from one ball the day before. What followed was one of the stranger innings of the tournament: 42 not out from 26 balls, four sixes, and not one four. Twenty-four of his runs came over the rope and the other eighteen were run. It is the innings of a batter who knows exactly how he wants to score and is willing to wait for it.

Maxwell, Miller's captain, made 6 from 9 and was bowled by Bracewell at the end of the eighteenth over, leaving 15 needed from 12 balls. Chris Jordan walked in, hit a four, and the nineteenth over went for 17. Game over, with six balls unused.

It would be unfair to say Amsterdam were outplayed. Their powerplay with the bat, 56 for 2, was better than Belfast's 51 for 1. Michael Bracewell took 2 for 20 in three overs and removed both Manenti and Maxwell. Payne's three overs cost 19 and Dutt's four went for 28. Belfast needed 42 from 39 balls at one stage, which is a chase that can be lost.

The difference was the six overs after the powerplay. Amsterdam went from 70 for 2 to 102 for 7 between the seventh and the thirteenth, and de Leede, Campher and Tim David — the three batters who had got in — were all gone by the tenth. Neither Edwards nor Pringle could accelerate from there without risking the tail. In the field, Pringle's 4-0-38-1 was the expensive spell, and Amsterdam used seven bowlers to Belfast's six.

Amsterdam came in on seven points with three straight wins and leave on seven with a defeat. Their net run rate of 0.23 is still the best of anyone outside Edinburgh — which, in a table this tight, may yet matter.

Three matches into the Irish leg, the first-innings totals read 107, 172 in a rain-shortened 19 overs, and 141. All three captains who won the toss chose to field, and two of the three won. Thursday's second game produced 285 runs for fifteen wickets in 39 overs — 7.31 an over — which sits between Wednesday's low-scoring game and the higher-scoring one earlier on Thursday.

The shape of this one is the thing to note. Both sides scored freely in the powerplay: Amsterdam 56, Belfast 51. Both slowed sharply in the middle overs: Amsterdam lost five wickets between the seventh and thirteenth, Belfast took from the fifth over to the fourteenth to add 65. We do not have a pitch report and will not invent one, but a pattern of quick starts and difficult middle overs is consistent with a surface that got harder to score on as the ball got older.

Mark Adair's 3 for 25 bookended Amsterdam's innings. He took Smith with the first ball of the third over, bowled Edwards in the seventeenth to break an eighth-wicket stand of 23, and had Payne caught with the last ball of the innings. In between, he held the catch that removed de Leede, Amsterdam's top scorer. He also bowled four wides, which is the only blemish on the card.

The award could as easily have gone to Netravalkar, whose 4-0-15-2 was the most economical spell of the match, or to Miller. It went to Adair, and there is something fitting in that. Twenty-four hours earlier he had bowled four wicketless overs for 26 and made 15 in a total of 107. On Thursday he was involved in four of the ten Amsterdam dismissals. Some players answer a bad day with a big score. Adair answered it with a full day's work.

Both our previews leaned towards Belfast, and Belfast won. The reasoning — a stronger seam attack in Irish conditions — is at least consistent with the scorecard: Adair, Netravalkar and Klaassen took seven wickets for 56 in twelve overs. The detail was less good. We named Mark Chapman as Belfast's player to watch; he made 14 from 14. We built the preview around Klaassen against de Leede; Klaassen took two wickets, but not de Leede, who fell to Jordan after making Amsterdam's top score. We said de Leede needed fifty and two wickets to win it for Amsterdam; he made 39 and bowled two overs.

We also flagged Belfast's habit of losing wickets in clusters. In this chase they did the opposite: their five wickets fell at 35, 66, 85, 100 and 127. And one correction we owe readers: both previews listed Belfast on nine points and second before this round. They were on seven, and by the time this match started they had also lost to Dublin. They are on nine now — which is where we had them two days early.

After twenty matches, Edinburgh Castle Rockers lead with eleven points from six games and a net run rate of 2.566. Belfast Wolves (-0.066) and Rotterdam Dockers (-0.129) are level on nine from seven, Amsterdam Flames have seven from seven, and Dublin Guardians and Glasgow Cosmic two each. Glasgow can no longer reach the top three. The top side goes straight to the final on September 20; second and third meet in the Qualifier on September 19; the league stage ends on September 17.

Belfast have Glasgow on Sunday, with Rotterdam and Edinburgh also to come. The Rotterdam game is the one that could settle second place: their first meeting was rained off, and the teams are separated now only by net run rate. Amsterdam have Edinburgh on Sunday, with Dublin and Glasgow also to come — the leaders and the bottom two. Three wins would take them to thirteen points, and as things stand their net run rate would give them the edge over both sides above them if it came down to a tie.

And Miller, whose tournament read nought from one ball on Wednesday, goes into the weekend with 42 not out. Cricket does not often offer a batter a second chance within a day. When it does, the good ones tend to take it without fuss — four times over the rope, and not once along the ground to it.