Botswana Finally Get One: Kasselman's 52 From 27 and a Seven-Bowler Squeeze Beat Sierra Leone by 23 Runs

Botswana arrived at the Gahanga B Ground having lost three matches by 55 runs, five wickets and ten wickets, the last of those in 8.1 overs. Their net run rate was minus 3.115. In a five-team tournament, that is the sort of record that turns the remaining fixtures into an exercise in dignity.

They won this one by 23 runs, and they won it properly — with a top-order innings that set a real total and a bowling performance in which seven different players turned an arm over and not one of them was collared. On the day Kenya chased 190 in 16.4 overs on this same square, Botswana's 165 for 4 was the more interesting piece of cricket.

Monroux Kasselman's 52 came from 27 balls with five fours and four sixes and it was the sort of start Botswana had not managed once in their first three matches. He took the powerplay away from Sierra Leone and gave the innings a platform it has not previously had.

What made the total work, though, was Vinoo Balakrishnan's 46 from 44 — an innings of no particular urgency in a format that demands it, and exactly what a side batting around a fast start needs. He and Phemelo Silas, 33 from 34, made sure the middle overs did not go the way Botswana's middle overs have been going. One hundred and sixty-five for four, only four wickets down, and a late 15 from eight by Thatayaone Tshose.

Samuel Conteh and Abu Kamara took two wickets apiece. Nobody in the Sierra Leone attack was expensive in the way that usually decides matches on this ground. They simply could not take enough wickets to stop it.

Abu Kamara's 46 from 37 held the chase together for as long as one innings can. Around him the card is brutal reading: Lansana Lamin 1, Eric Turay 0, Ibrahim Kpaka 0, Samuel Conteh 0. Four batters, one run between them, and the chase went from having a chance to having only George Sesay.

Botswana's bowling in that stretch was a study in rotation rather than menace. Mmoloki Mooketsi took 3 for 25, Katlo Piet's four overs went for 16, Tshose's three for 13. Six bowlers took a wicket. It was not a spell that anyone will remember; it was six separate people declining to give anything away for forty minutes, which in a chase is the same thing.

George Sesay's unbeaten 28 from 19 at the end made the margin respectable and nothing more. Sierra Leone have now lost all four of their matches and have conceded 204, 250, 191 and 165.

Gahanga was, as it has been all week, a batting ground — but this was the lowest-scoring match played on it in five days, and the difference was the pace off the ball. Botswana's slower bowlers, Piet and Tshose in particular, took the ball's momentum away in the middle overs and found that the surface, on its fourth consecutive day of use, was finally gripping a little. Six different Botswana bowlers took a wicket and none of the seven used went at more than ten an over.

An award for a player on the losing side is always worth noticing, and this one was earned twice over: 4 overs for 34 and two wickets in the first innings, then 46 from 37 with seven fours in the second. He was the best batter on the field and one of the two best bowlers.

He was also, at the moment of his dismissal in the twelfth over, the entire Sierra Leone chase. That is the quiet tragedy of associate cricket — a genuinely good all-round performance that would win most matches, played in a side where the next-highest score was 28.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — we'll have full analysis for the closing stages of the tournament.

Botswana get on the board with one win from four and a net run rate that has stopped haemorrhaging. It will not be enough to reach the business end of this competition, but it changes what the rest of their tournament is about — there is a top order here, and Kasselman at the top of it is worth watching.

Sierra Leone remain winless in four. Abu Kamara aside, they have not found a batter capable of building an innings, and they have conceded more than 165 in three of their four matches. The gap between them and the rest of this field is currently the widest in the tournament.