Three Wickets in Four Balls, Not a Run Between Them — Craig Young Gives Dublin Guardians Their First Win at the Sixth Attempt

For seventeen matches the European T20 Premier League was a Dutch tournament, and Dublin Guardians spent five of them losing. They lost by 52 to Belfast, by 33 to Glasgow, by four wickets to Edinburgh, by seven wickets to Rotterdam, and by nine runs to Amsterdam on a night their bowlers gave away seventeen wides. When the league moved to Ireland — to The Village in Malahide — for its eighteenth match, Dublin were the only side in the competition without a point.

They won with 33 balls to spare. Craig Young took 5 for 21, three of them in four deliveries in the tenth over, and Belfast Wolves — whose middle order of Mark Chapman, David Miller and Glenn Maxwell had carried them through the Dutch leg — were bowled out for 107. David Willey hit four sixes in a 25-ball 44, Daryl Mitchell finished 35 not out, and the Guardians were home in the fifteenth over. Sometimes a side does not need a new plan. Sometimes it just needs to be home.

Belfast's innings did not begin badly so much as unevenly. Devon Conway was caught by Mitchell off Matt Hollard in the second over; Young had Mark Chapman caught by Mitchell in the fifth; and Lorcan Tucker, who had survived a Dublin review in the fifth over, was caught behind off Josh Little nine balls later. Forty-three for 3 at the end of the powerplay is not a crisis. Paul Stirling and Harry Manenti steadied it to 62 for 3 by the start of the tenth over, and with Miller and Maxwell still to come, Belfast had every reason to think 150 was there.

Then Young came back for that tenth over. Second ball, Stirling — 22 from 18 and looking set — was caught by Mitchell. Third ball, Miller was given not out to a catch behind; Dublin reviewed, the decision was overturned, and Miller had gone for a first-ball duck. Maxwell survived the hat-trick ball and was caught behind by Ben Calitz off the next. The scoreboard read 62 for 3 after the first ball of the over and 62 for 6 four balls later. Chapman, Miller and Maxwell — three of the biggest names in Belfast's order — finished with ten runs from fourteen balls between them.

What makes it a complete bowling performance rather than one great over is what happened around it. Ravichandran Ashwin bowled his four overs for 13. Willey bowled Manenti and had Adair caught for 2 for 24. Little conceded 22 from four. Young came back to remove Fred Klaassen in the nineteenth and Hollard ended it with two balls unused. Mitchell held four catches. And in 19.4 overs Dublin conceded two extras — one leg-bye and a single wide — four days after seventeen wides had helped cost them a nine-run defeat to Amsterdam. That is not a coincidence of the scorecard. It is a side that went away and fixed something.

Small targets carry their own trap. Dublin have spent this tournament finding ways to lose from positions of control, and James Vince's dismissal in the fourth over — caught by Maxwell off Saurabh Netravalkar with 25 on the board — was the moment a nervous side might have started counting.

David Willey did not let them. He had already taken two wickets; now he hit three fours and four sixes in 25 balls, Dublin reached fifty in 33 deliveries, and the powerplay closed at 56 for 1 — thirteen more than Belfast had managed in theirs, for two fewer wickets. By the time Maxwell bowled him in his only over, at 64 for 2 in the eighth, the chase needed 44 from more than twelve overs.

Daryl Mitchell and Harry Tector took it from there, 47 unbroken in 41 balls. Mitchell struck four fours and a six in his 35 not out; Tector's 14 from 22 was the innings of a man who knew his only job was to be there at the end. They were. Mitchell's afternoon — four catches and 35 not out — was the quiet second-best performance of the match.

It would be too easy to read 107 all out as a verdict on Belfast. It is better read as a verdict on four balls. At 62 for 3 in the tenth over, they were a little behind the rate and nowhere near trouble; at 62 for 6 they had lost the three batters most likely to score the other ninety. Manenti's 24 from 21 was the top score, and Adair's 15 from 18 pushed the total past 100 — but the lower order was asked to build an innings, not finish one, and Belfast did not reach three figures until the last ball of the nineteenth over.

With the ball, there was not a great deal to defend. Mark Adair bowled four overs for 26 and Matthew Humphreys three for 19, and Maxwell's single over cost two runs and removed Willey. The expensive spell was Netravalkar's — 33 from three overs — though he took Vince. Klaassen, who took 2 for 26 when these sides met in August, went wicketless in 3.3 overs for 29. None of it changed the arithmetic: a side that makes 107 needs three early wickets, and Belfast took one in the first seven overs.

Belfast came into the match on seven points, level with Rotterdam and Amsterdam behind Edinburgh. They leave it on seven, with a net run rate that has just taken a heavy blow — and with a reminder that a batting order this strong can still be undone in a single over.

We do not have a pitch report for the first ETPL match in Ireland, and it would be wrong to invent one. What the numbers say is this: 218 runs for twelve wickets in 34.1 overs. Belfast scored at 5.44 an over and took 43 balls to reach fifty; Dublin scored at 7.65 and took 33. Ashwin's four overs cost 13, the most economical full spell of the match, and he did not take a wicket — which suggests a surface that rewarded accuracy more than it offered help.

Dublin chose to field, and it was the right call. The first innings was the harder one to bat in, or at least it looked that way — though four balls from Craig Young make it impossible to say how much of that was the ground and how much was the bowler.

Five for 21 in four overs, and the shape of it matters as much as the figures. Craig Young took a wicket in the powerplay (Chapman), three in the middle overs (Stirling, Miller, Maxwell) and one at the death (Klaassen). He was not a new-ball specialist who got lucky with a collapse; he was the bowler Ashwin kept going back to, in every phase, and every time he came back something happened.

Four of his five victims were Chapman, Stirling, Miller and Maxwell, and three of them came in an over that turned the first Irish derby played in Ireland from a contest into a procession. Afterwards, Young was plain about the five defeats that preceded it.

Our preview leaned towards Dublin — "narrowly, conditionally, and against the form book" — on the grounds of home conditions, and the result went our way. The margin did not: eight wickets with 33 balls to spare is not narrow by any definition, and we should not pretend we saw a rout coming.

The detail of the call was more mixed. We named Ashwin as Dublin's player to watch and said he needed a match-defining spell, ideally with the wickets of Chapman and Maxwell. He bowled four overs for 13, which defined a great deal — but it was Young who took Chapman and Maxwell. We named Fred Klaassen as Belfast's man and suggested two powerplay wickets from him would put Dublin back in trouble; he went wicketless. The Klaassen-versus-Vince duel we highlighted never happened in any meaningful sense — Vince fell to Netravalkar. And we leaned heavily on home advantage, which a scorecard cannot measure. The honest summary: right side, right reason in outline, wrong names in the detail.

After eighteen matches every side has played six. Edinburgh Castle Rockers lead on eleven points; Belfast Wolves, Rotterdam Dockers and Amsterdam Flames are all on seven; Dublin Guardians and Glasgow Cosmic have two each. The format is unforgiving: the top three qualify, the league leader goes straight to the final on September 20, and second and third meet in the Qualifier the day before. With the league stage ending on September 17, there are twelve matches left and all of them are at Malahide.

For Dublin, one win does not make a campaign. Their maximum is now ten points, three sides are already on seven, and their next opponent is Edinburgh on Friday — the unbeaten leaders — with Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Glasgow to follow. They will probably need all four. What Wednesday proved is that they have the attack to make that a genuine question rather than a formality: five bowlers used, one wide conceded, and a spinner of Ashwin's class going at 3.25 an over.

Belfast play Amsterdam on Thursday afternoon, with Rotterdam, Edinburgh and Glasgow still to come. Chapman, Miller and Maxwell made ten runs between them here. It would be a brave bowling attack that expects them to fail twice in a row.