Saudi Arabia Beat China by 64 Runs — Ten Overs, Five Ducks and a Fourth Win From Four

The scorecard says ten overs a side, and says nothing about why. What it does say is that for eleven balls on Monday morning, China were in charge of a cricket match against the best side in this event. Tian Sen Qun had Saudi Arabia 17 for 3 before the second over was out, and at the Selangor Turf Club, where China had bowled Singapore out the previous day, there was the faint outline of a surprise.

Waji Ul Hassan erased it. His 49 from 27 balls took Saudi Arabia to 98 for 6, and then five bowlers in two-over bursts reduced China to 34 for 8. Saudi Arabia won by 64 runs, their fourth win from four.

In a ten-over game, 17 for 3 is a crisis. Abdul Wahid went to the third ball, caught by Zhao Zhilong off Ma Qiancheng, and Tian Sen Qun then had Manan Ali and Faisal Khan caught within five balls of each other. Saudi Arabia needed somebody to bat as if nothing had happened, and Waji Ul Hassan did exactly that: four fours and two sixes in 27 balls, 44 with Hisham Shaikh for the fourth wicket, and then 36 in 18 balls with Usman Khalid. He fell for 49 to Tian Sen Qun's third wicket with a ball of the innings left, and Usman Najeeb was run out off the last, but 98 from ten overs after that start was a fine piece of batting.

The defence was almost mechanical. Ishtiaq Ahmad took two wickets in his two overs, Muhammad Saqib ran out Yang Wangjie, and the last four bowlers used — Saqib, Khalid, Zain Ul Abidin and Hisham Shaikh — sent down eight overs for 14 runs and five wickets. From 29 for 4 early in the sixth over, China added five runs in the remaining 4.4 overs. Saudi Arabia have now beaten every opponent they have faced, and the net run rate has climbed to +2.257.

It would be easy to dismiss 34 for 8 and move on, but Tian Sen Qun deserves a paragraph of his own. On Sunday he took 3 for 23 against Singapore; here he took 3 for 22 in two overs against the group leaders, removing their top order and then their top scorer. Then he came in at number four with China 16 for 3 and batted 22 balls for 13 not out, which on a morning when nine team-mates managed 14 between them was something close to defiance. He was China's leading wicket-taker and leading run-scorer in the same match.

The rest is hard reading. Five ducks, three of them bowled or stumped, and Chen Zhuo Yue's 11-ball nought the longest of them. Seven of China's 34 runs were extras. Against Singapore they had batted their full 20 overs for the first time in the event; here, with only ten to survive, they could not keep their wickets or score from them. Four defeats from four, and a net run rate of -4.924.

The match was played as ten overs a side, and the scorecard records the reduction without giving the reason. China chose to field. Saudi Arabia scored at 9.8 an over and China at 3.4, and the difference is better explained by batting than by the pitch: Waji Ul Hassan found the boundary six times in 27 balls, while China hit three fours in ten overs. The Saudi attack bowled straight — two batters bowled, one stumped, two caught behind by Sidharth Sankar — and on a surface where nobody in white was in a hurry to score, that was all it took.

Waji Ul Hassan made the most runs, but the award went to Usman Khalid, and it is not hard to see why. He arrived at 61 for 4 with just over three overs left and hit a four and a six in an unbeaten 17 from 8 balls, adding 36 with Waji at exactly the point an innings of 98 is separated from one of 80. Then he bowled two overs for four runs, having Zhao Zhilong caught behind by Sidharth Sankar and Zong Yuechao caught by Faisal Khan in the space of five balls, so that 29 for 3 became 29 for 5. Seventeen runs of his own, four conceded, two wickets: a small day's work, and a complete one.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — we'll have full analysis for the next encounter.

After four rounds of Qualifier B, Saudi Arabia are unbeaten on eight points (net run rate +2.257) and cannot be caught at the top: Hong Kong, second on five after their no-result against Maldives, can reach seven at most. Malaysia (+1.665) and Singapore (-0.363) are level on four, Maldives have three (-0.842), and China (-4.924) are without a point and cannot now climb off the bottom.

Each side has one match left. For Saudi Arabia it is about finishing the job; for the three sides between five points and three, it is about which of them finishes above the others, and on this table net run rate may well have the final say.