Wolves Win by 52 — Maxwell and Chapman Rebuild From 48 for 3, Then Dublin Lose Six Inside Eight Overs

The second match in the history of the European T20 Premier League produced, for about six overs, exactly the contest its organisers would have drawn up: an Irish derby of sorts at a Dutch ground, Dublin's bowlers on top, Belfast three down for 48 with Paul Stirling and Lorcan Tucker back in the pavilion and Devon Conway padding up to Ravichandran Ashwin. Then Mark Chapman and Glenn Maxwell batted together for 84 runs, and the contest was over long before the scoreboard admitted it.

Belfast Wolves won by 52 runs. Dublin Guardians were bowled out — or as near as makes no difference, nine down in their twenty overs — for 132, having been 36 for 6 in the eighth. It was less a collapse than a demolition, and it happened to a batting order containing Harry Tector, Daryl Mitchell, Muhammad Waseem and Vijay Shankar.

Belfast's innings had two distinct halves and the join is easy to find. The first was six overs long and belonged to Dublin: Tim Tector bowled by Chris Wood for a 7-ball 12 after an opening stand of 40 in 4.1 overs, Paul Stirling caught at 48 having hit six fours in 21 balls, and Lorcan Tucker caught behind first ball from Josh Little one delivery later. The powerplay closed at 52 for 3. When Ashwin had Devon Conway lbw for a 12-ball 9 in the ninth over, Belfast were 68 for 4 and 130 looked optimistic.

The second half was Mark Chapman and Glenn Maxwell, and it was the sort of partnership that decides matches in leagues where the bowling is thinner than the batting. Fifty of it came from 32 balls. Chapman got to his own fifty from 30 with five fours and two sixes and was the aggressor for most of it; Maxwell, who reached fifty from 34 with a single four and four sixes, played the more selective innings and the more valuable one. The stand was worth 84 and lasted until the seventeenth over. By the time Maxwell fell for 60 with two balls of the innings remaining, Belfast had 182 and the arithmetic of the night had been rewritten.

Dublin's bowling figures are worth reading in that light. Wood took 3 for 43 and Little 2 for 42, and both did their damage in the powerplay before conceding heavily later. Ashwin's four overs cost 23 — the only spell of the innings that Chapman and Maxwell could not get away — and he took the wicket of Conway. A captain who bowls his own four overs at 5.75 in a total of 184 has done his job; he needed one other bowler to do the same, and nobody did.

What happened next was brief and almost unwatchable if you were wearing Dublin colours. Mark Adair bowled Harry Tector with the second ball of the innings. Muhammad Waseem was run out by Tim Tector for 9 in the second over. Sanjay Krishnamurthi was caught by Maxwell off Fred Klaassen at 27, Daryl Mitchell was lbw to Adair for 3 at 29, Vijay Shankar was bowled by Chris Jordan for 3 at 36, and Ben Calitz was lbw to Klaassen for 6 two balls later — the wicket confirmed on a Belfast review. Six down for 36 in 7.2 overs; the powerplay produced 34 for 4.

The recovery, such as it was, came from George Dockrell and the tail. Dockrell hit three sixes in a 22-ball 35 and put on 36 with Ashwin for the seventh wicket before Matthew Humphreys had them both — Ashwin caught for 15, Dockrell caught by Jordan at 94. Chris Wood finished 25 not out from 22 and Matt Hollard 17 not out from 12, an unbroken tenth-wicket stand of 37 that shaved the margin without ever threatening it. Belfast used five bowlers and every one of them took a wicket at an economy rate of 7.50 or better.

Two matches into the ETPL and Sportpark Westvliet has already established a character. The ball does not come on: both powerplays here produced wickets rather than runs (Belfast 52 for 3, Dublin 34 for 4), and in the league's opening match on Wednesday the chasing side also lost three inside four overs. The batters who succeed are those who hit through the line late — Chapman and Maxwell struck six of their side's sixes between them in the middle overs, when the field was spread and the bowlers were forced to take pace off into a slow surface. The batters who fail are those who play across a ball that is doing a little off the seam, which describes almost every Dublin dismissal in the first eight overs.

Maxwell's award was for the innings, but the captaincy deserves the footnote. He bowled Adair and Klaassen in tandem through the powerplay and did not break the pattern when Dublin were four down and looking for anything slower; he then brought Humphreys on at the first sign of a partnership and got both set batters within five deliveries of each other. In a competition still working out what its standard is, that combination — an unbeaten-looking 60 from 38 and a bowling plan that never gave the opposition an over to breathe — is about as complete a night as a franchise captain can have.

This fixture did not have a CricIntel preview. The ETPL is new to the calendar and we are still building our model for it — three matches of data, all at one ground, is not a base to make confident calls from. We will have previews for the remaining fixtures as the sample grows, and we will be honest about the ones we get wrong.

Belfast take two points and a net run rate that, this early, is worth more than the points. The question for them is the top order: Stirling, Tucker and Conway made 40 between them and the side was rescued by its Nos. 5 and 6 — Maxwell will not want that to become the pattern. For Dublin, the concern is not the loss but the manner of it. A batting order with Harry Tector, Daryl Mitchell, Muhammad Waseem and Vijay Shankar in the top five made 36 for 6, and the only batters who looked comfortable were the ones batting at seven and nine. In a tournament played entirely at one venue, sides that cannot read the surface do not get many chances to correct it — and Dublin's next assignment comes around quickly.