Five Runs and Four Overs for 22: Shubham Ranjane Squeezes Edinburgh as Rotterdam Draw Level at the Top of the ETPL

Ten days ago in The Hague, a Rotterdam batting line-up led by Faf du Plessis and Heinrich Klaasen was 9 for 4 against Edinburgh and all out for 93. On Tuesday at Malahide, du Plessis and Klaasen led them to 181 for 6, and the Dockers defended it by five runs. Tournaments turn on nights like this — not because the better side won, but because the side that had been embarrassed found a way to make the rematch mean something else entirely.

The match was decided by margins, and the widest margin of all belonged to a bowler who did not feature in any of our pre-match writing. Shubham Ranjane bowled four overs for 22 and took three wickets in a chase that ended 176 for 5. Edinburgh scored at better than nine and a half an over against everyone else. Against Ranjane they managed five and a half, and that is roughly where the five runs went.

Rotterdam chose to bat and were not comfortable for long. Colin Munro made 26 from 18, but Michael Levitt went for a four-ball duck and Vikramjit Singh for 9, and at 66 for 3 in the eighth over the Dockers were in danger of wasting a good surface. Faf du Plessis was the reason they did not. He reached fifty from 27 balls without hitting a six — nine fours did the work — and with Heinrich Klaasen added 66 for the fourth wicket to take Rotterdam to 132 in the fifteenth.

Klaasen's 47 from 27, with five fours and two sixes, came on the night Rotterdam needed it most. Edinburgh pulled things back with three wickets between the fifteenth and nineteenth overs — 132 for 4, 145 for 5, 163 for 6 — but David Wiese's 17 not out from eight balls took the Dockers past 180.

The defence rested on three bowlers. Ranjane, Anrich Nortje and Wiese bowled twelve overs between them for 78 runs; the other eight overs went for 97. Nortje did not take a wicket, but 4-0-27-0 against a side chasing 182 is its own kind of contribution, and Wiese's four overs included a maiden. Jasper Davidson took two wickets and went for 42 from three overs — the price, on this night, of the breakthroughs.

Edinburgh lost Andries Gous early, at 8 for 1, and then JJ Smuts and Brandon McMullen put on 65 for the second wicket. McMullen's 47 from 30 with three sixes was the innings of the chase, and at 73 for 1 in the ninth over the Rockers were very much in it. Then four wickets fell for 45 runs and, at 118 for 5 after 14.5 overs, they needed 64 from 31 balls.

Mitchell Santner and Tom Curran nearly did it. They added 58 unbroken, Curran hitting three sixes in his 33 from 18, and they took the match to the last over. What they could not do was make up for the balls that had gone before. Santner's 39 not out came from 31 deliveries — a captain holding one end while the other exploded — and in a chase lost by five runs, the gap between a run a ball and something quicker weighs heavier than it looks on the card.

The bowling was honest without being incisive. Reece Topley and Tom Curran took two wickets each, and Brandon McMullen's two overs for 14 were well judged. But Santner and Mark Watt bowled eight overs for 68 without a wicket, which on a night decided by five runs is the other half of the explanation. Trent Boult, a feature of Edinburgh's attack in the first meeting, did not bowl.

This was a fair contest between bat and ball at Malahide. Both sides passed 175, and the bowlers who mattered were the ones who gave the batters least to hit: Ranjane at 5.50 an over, Nortje at 6.75, Wiese at 7.25, and McMullen at 7.00 across his two overs. The fingerspinners were not a factor — Santner, Watt and Roelof van der Merwe bowled nine overs between them without a wicket. It rewarded bowlers who could hold a length, and punished every over that did not.

Shubham Ranjane will not be the first name anyone remembers from a team sheet containing du Plessis, Klaasen, Nortje and Wiese. On Tuesday he was the difference. He made a useful 15 from 14 with a six in the back half of the Rotterdam innings, and then bowled his four overs for 22 with three wickets while the rest of the attack was being hit at better than nine and a half an over.

In a match of 357 runs, the award went to the man who gave up the fewest across a full four overs. There is a quiet justice in that — the loud performances filled the scorebook, and the quiet one decided what the scorebook finally said.

We leaned towards Edinburgh in both preview pieces, and Edinburgh lost by five runs. That call was wrong. It was also built partly on a premise the Rockers had already lost by the time the match began: both previews described Edinburgh as unbeaten, but they had been beaten by Amsterdam on September 13. Our blog preview also described Tom Curran as taking a hat-trick in the first meeting; our own review of that match records his figures as 3 for 16, and we correct that here.

Some of the reasoning held. We wrote that Rotterdam's route to victory ran through du Plessis surviving the new ball — he made 54 — and our blog preview's Rotterdam player to watch, Heinrich Klaasen, made 47 from 27. Tom Curran, our Edinburgh pick in the same piece, took 2 for 38 and made 33 not out. Our match-page picks fared worse: Sam Curran did not bat or bowl, and Anrich Nortje bowled tightly but without a wicket. The Player of the Match, Shubham Ranjane, was not mentioned in either preview.

After both matches on September 15, Edinburgh Castle Rockers and Rotterdam Dockers are level on 13 points from nine matches, separated only by net run rate — Edinburgh +1.378, Rotterdam +0.049. Amsterdam Flames (+0.930) and Belfast Wolves (+0.608) have 11. Glasgow Cosmic (4) and Dublin Guardians (2) can no longer reach the top three.

The top three qualify: first goes straight to the final on September 20, second and third meet in the Qualifier on September 19. Each side has one league match left. Edinburgh play Belfast on September 17 and Rotterdam play Dublin the same day, while Amsterdam meet Glasgow on September 16. Neither Amsterdam nor Belfast can pass 13 points, so a win on September 17 guarantees Edinburgh or Rotterdam a top-two finish. If both win, both finish on 15, and first place — and the direct route to the final — would come down to net run rate, where Edinburgh currently hold a considerable lead.