Smuts Falls Two Short, Boult Takes Three in Three Overs, Curran Takes a Hat-Trick — Edinburgh Win by 59

Two individual performances defined this match and neither of them was quite complete. JJ Smuts made 98 from 60 balls and was caught in the nineteenth over, two runs short of a hundred he had earned three times over. Tom Curran took a hat-trick and had to wait an over and a half in the middle of it, because his second and third wickets fell on the last two balls of the sixteenth over and the third came at the start of his next. Cricket rarely gives anyone the tidy version.

What it did give was clarity. Edinburgh Castle Rockers are the best side in this tournament so far and Wednesday evening at Voorburg was the clearest statement of it — 189 for 5 batting first on a ground where nobody else has passed 180, and then Belfast Wolves bowled out for 130 in 17.1 overs having been 21 for 2 in the third. Fifty-nine runs is a wide margin in a T20 and it understates what happened.

Belfast bowled first with Boult, Curran, Santner and Watt sitting in the opposition dressing room, which suggests they had thought about the chase more than the defence. JJ Smuts made them regret the order of operations. He was 50 from 28 with six fours and two sixes, and it never looked hurried — Smuts is a left-hander who scores through point and mid-off with a very straight bat and only goes aerial when the field forces him to.

Ross Adair fell in the third, Andries Gous at 87 in the tenth. Brandon McMullen then made 30 from 16 and Edinburgh went from 87 for 2 to 135 for 3 in four and a half overs. Smuts was still there at 155 for 4 in the seventeenth with a hundred looking inevitable, and he was caught at deep square off Fred Klaassen at 171 in the nineteenth, on 98, having faced 60 balls and hit eleven fours and three sixes.

Mitchell Santner — captaining, and batting at six — hit two sixes in a 13-ball 25 not out to take them to 189. Chris Jordan's four overs cost 45 and Matthew Humphreys' 39. Klaassen was the only Belfast bowler under six an over, and he was also the man who ended the innings' best chance of a century. There is no justice in a bowling analysis.

Belfast's chase died in fifteen balls. Trent Boult had Tim Tector caught in the third over, bowled Lorcan Tucker next ball, and bowled Paul Stirling — who had made 25 from 13 with four fours and a six and was the one man batting as the chase demanded — in the fifth. Three for 16 from three overs, two of them bowled, all three with a new ball that was swinging.

At 51 for 4 in the sixth, Glenn Maxwell and David Miller put on 46 and it briefly resembled a contest. Miller's 20 from 21 was too slow for the equation and he was lbw to Curran in the twelfth. Maxwell made 35 from 23 with two fours and two sixes and was caught at 112 in the fourteenth off Jack Jarvis, at which point Belfast needed 78 from 37 with four wickets standing, which is not a chase but an obligation.

Tom Curran finished it. Fred Klaassen caught by Ross Adair on the fifth ball of the sixteenth, Matthew Humphreys bowled on the sixth, and then a gap — Curran had finished that over, somebody else bowled the seventeenth, and the wicket that completed the hat-trick came with the first delivery of his next, Mark Adair also caught by Ross Adair. Four for 20 from 3.1 overs, and a hat-trick assembled across an intervening over during which he had, presumably, plenty of time to think about it.

There was no CricIntel preview for this fixture, so nothing of ours to mark. The pattern worth flagging for the next one is Belfast's powerplay: 51 runs for four wickets here, and a top order of Stirling, Tector, Tucker and Chapman that has now been dismantled by new-ball swing twice in a week. Boult and Klaassen both moved it; Belfast's answer both times was to attack through it rather than around it.

Edinburgh Castle Rockers are top of the ETPL table — three wins, one no-result, seven points, and a net run rate of 3.288 that no other side is within two and a half of. They play Rotterdam Dockers next, the only other unbeaten team, and it is the fixture that will decide who tops the group. Their bowling attack of Boult, Curran, Santner, Watt and Jarvis has taken all ten in a run chase for the first time this tournament, and did it for 130.

Belfast Wolves stay third on five points from four — two wins, one defeat, one no-result — and the defeat has cost them a chunk of net run rate they will want back. Maxwell, Miller, Stirling, Tucker, Jordan and Adair is a squad built to chase 190; on Wednesday it was 21 for 2 before the fourth over and never recovered the shape. They face Glasgow Cosmic next, which is a gentler assignment, and they need it.