Dublin Bowled Seventeen Wides and Lost by Nine — Vince's 73 Deserved a Better Ending Than This

The margin was nine runs. The extras column read eighteen, seventeen of them wides. You do not need a model to work out where this match was lost.

Dublin Guardians bowled well in patches and badly in the gaps between them. Ravichandran Ashwin, their captain, sent down four overs for eighteen. George Dockrell took two. Matt Hollard took two. And collectively they gave Amsterdam Flames seventeen free deliveries on a small ground in a match they lost by less than two overs' worth of runs.

Which is a shame, because for thirteen overs of the chase Dublin played the best cricket they have played all tournament, and James Vince made the innings of the night.

Amsterdam were 50 inside 3.4 overs, which on this ground is the sort of start that decides an innings before it has properly begun. Yuvraaj Samra hit two fours and was caught by Daryl Mitchell off Matt Hollard at 39 for 1; Steven Smith and Bas de Leede then took it to 73 before de Leede fell to Josh Little.

Smith made 38 from 27 — two fours, two sixes, an innings of pure orthodoxy at eight and a half an over — and was bowled by George Dockrell at 93 for 3 in the eleventh. Tim David made 35 from 26 and was caught at 137 for 6. Between them, Michael Bracewell (6) and Scott Edwards (3) contributed nine from fifteen balls, and for four overs the innings stalled: 109 for 4 in the thirteenth, 118 for 5 in the sixteenth.

The finish belonged to Curtis Campher, who made 32 from 19 with five fours and was run out off the fifth ball of the twentieth over. Thirty-two from nineteen at the death, after his side had lost three wickets between the thirteenth and seventeenth overs, was what turned a stalling innings into a defendable one.

And then there were the extras. Eighteen, of which seventeen were wides — seventeen free runs and seventeen extra deliveries, in a match decided by nine. Ashwin, bowling four overs of offspin for eighteen runs and the wicket of Tim David, was the one Dublin bowler who kept his line all night. Little's four cost 39. Hollard's cost 37. Dockrell's 31. The four overs from Shankar, Mitchell and Young cost 44 between them.

James Vince has spent a decade being described as the most elegant batter not quite delivering, and this was the innings of a man who had decided to deliver. Daryl Mitchell was bowled in the third over. Vince and Harry Tector then added 50 in twenty-one deliveries — Vince 40 of them — and Dublin's powerplay produced 69 for 1, nine more than Amsterdam's.

His fifty came from 27 balls with eight fours and two sixes. At 114 for 2 in the thirteenth over, Dublin needed 56 from 46 with eight wickets standing and Vince set. They had the better batter on the field and, for the first time in five matches, the game.

Then Richard Gleeson got him caught behind by Scott Edwards for 73, and Dublin's innings turned into the thing Dublin's innings always turn into. Tim Pringle had George Dockrell caught by Tim David at 126 for 4, Bracewell had Sanjay Krishnamurthi lbw at 131 for 5, and Pringle then bowled Ashwin at 132 for 6. Four wickets for eighteen runs in twenty-three balls.

Vijay Shankar and Noah Croes salvaged some dignity with 27 for the seventh wicket, and Dublin actually got to 159 for 7 with two balls left — needing eleven, which is a lot but not a fantasy. Aryan Dutt then had Shankar caught by Jordan Neill off the fifth ball and Croes caught and bowled off the sixth. 160 for 8, beaten by nine.

Tim Pringle's figures — 4-0-22-3 — were the best on either side in a match that produced 329 runs, and the only three-wicket haul in it. He took Tector at 80 for 2, Dockrell at 126 for 4 and Ashwin at 132 for 6, which is to say he took a wicket in each of the three phases in which Dublin needed a partnership.

Left-arm spin on a small ground against a chasing side is a job most captains give reluctantly. Scott Edwards gave Pringle all four of his overs and got the match's decisive spell in return. Alongside him, Michael Bracewell's four cost 25 and Aryan Dutt's four cost 28 with the two wickets that finished it. Amsterdam's three slow bowlers: twelve overs, 75 runs, six wickets.

Richard Gleeson's four cost 38 and brought the two most important dismissals of the innings — Mitchell early, Vince at the pivot. That is a fast bowler's trade-off, and on this occasion it was worth every run.

Sportpark Westvliet gave both sides a fast outfield and short boundaries: 329 runs in forty overs, and 50 up inside four overs for one side and inside five for the other. Dublin won the toss and fielded, which on a surface offering this little to bowlers was less a plan than a preference.

The DRS was busy again — three reviews, all struck down, the last of them Krishnamurthi's own failed challenge to the lbw that ended him in the sixteenth. On a ground this small the margins are boundaries, not decisions, and Dublin gave away seventeen wides. That was the review that mattered.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — we'll have full analysis for the next Guardians and Flames fixtures. The running read we would defend is that Dublin's problem this tournament has never been talent: they field Vince, Tector, Mitchell, Dockrell, Little and Ashwin and have lost all five. What we had not identified was the discipline number. Seventeen wides in a nine-run defeat is not a batting failure or a talent failure. It is a control failure, and it is fixable in a way that the rest of their tournament has not been.

Amsterdam Flames move to five points from five with a net run rate of 0.202, fourth and squarely in the semi-final conversation. Two wins in three days — chasing 172 against Glasgow, defending 170 here — is the first sustained form they have shown, and the fact that both were built on Pringle, Dutt and Bracewell rather than on Smith and David is the encouraging part. They face Rotterdam, Belfast and Edinburgh next: three sides above them, and the whole season in it.

Dublin Guardians are bottom on nought from five with a net run rate of -1.645, having scored 729 and conceded 825. They have now lost by 52 runs, 33 runs, four wickets, seven wickets and nine runs — the trend line is in the right direction and the points column has not moved. Belfast, Edinburgh and Glasgow remain. The Glasgow game on the final weekend is the one they have to win to avoid finishing without a victory.

Watch Vince. Seventy-three from 46 with ten fours on a night when nobody else in his side passed 25 was the best individual innings of the round, and it deserved a scorecard that did not end in a nine-run defeat.