One Ball to Spare in a Match Neither Side Wanted to Win — Rotterdam Grind Down Glasgow at Voorburg

Some T20 matches are decided by a single act of violence. This one was decided by attrition, which is rarer and, on a Tuesday evening at Voorburg, considerably more interesting to watch. One hundred and forty on the board, one hundred and forty-one to get, and the chase went to the penultimate delivery.

Glasgow Cosmic will be the more frustrated. They were 43 for 4 in the eighth over and got to 140, which is a recovery; they then had Rotterdam 97 for 4 in the sixteenth, which is a position from which a defence of 140 becomes genuinely plausible. What they did not have was a bowler who could get through the nineteenth over without conceding the game, and Ben McDermott made sure of that.

Rotterdam bowled first and had four wickets in eight overs, all four of them top-order. Jason Roy lbw to Anrich Nortje, George Munsey caught off David Wiese, Richie Berrington caught for a five-ball duck, Matthew Cross caught behind for 1. Thirty-nine for 2 in the sixth became 43 for 4 in the eighth, and two DRS reviews had already been struck down.

Liam Livingstone made 54 from 39 with one four and four sixes, which is a peculiar and rather revealing shape for a fifty. He was not able to find the boundary along the ground — the outfield had slowed, the field was set deep and straight — so he cleared it instead, four times, and otherwise nudged singles. The fifth-wicket stand with Liam Naylor produced 61 in twenty-eight balls and was the only period of the innings in which Glasgow looked like a side batting rather than surviving.

Naylor went for 26 in the fourteenth, Michael Leask was bowled for 1, Keshav Maharaj caught for 5, Ali Khan lbw for 1. Glasgow lost 5 for 36 from 104 for 4, and Livingstone was ninth out in the twentieth over. One hundred and forty from 20 overs on this ground is below par by twenty. That it was not below par by fifty is entirely down to him.

Rotterdam's reply was one of the strangest of the tournament. Twenty-eight for 1 in the powerplay. Fifty in 9.3 overs. One hundred in 15.4. At no point did they get ahead of the required rate, and at almost no point did they look like losing.

Michael Levitt made 37 from 41 — a strike rate of 90 in a chase of 141, which sounds like a problem and was actually the innings' foundation. Faf du Plessis went for 4 in the fourth over, caught off Paul van Meekeren. Heinrich Klaasen made 11 from 10 and was caught at deep midwicket, also off van Meekeren, who had by then taken three of the top four and conceded 21 from his four overs.

At 97 for 4 in the sixteenth over Rotterdam needed 44 from 28. Ben Manenti hit a four and a six in a ten-ball 16 and was caught by Livingstone off Lungi Ngidi at 132 in the nineteenth, and it came down to McDermott, who had been in since the fifteenth over and had been playing the situation rather than the bowling. Nine needed from the last over; three fours and a six across his 24 balls; done with one delivery unused, with David Wiese for company.

Glasgow had Keshav Maharaj and Lungi Ngidi in this attack — a Test-match spinner and an international quick — and the bowler who took Rotterdam's top order apart was Paul van Meekeren, four overs, 21 runs, three wickets, all of them batters who had passed double figures or looked set to.

He did it by hitting a hard length at just short of driving distance and letting the surface do the rest. Voorburg on Tuesday was two-paced: the ball held up for the medium-pacers and skidded for anyone who dropped short. Ngidi and Maharaj both bowled their four and neither found the same length; between them they conceded 58 for one wicket. Van Meekeren was the difference between Glasgow losing by one ball and Glasgow losing by four overs — and, with one more partnership from anybody in the top four, might have been the difference between losing and winning.

There was no CricIntel preview for this fixture, so nothing of ours to mark. The observation we would carry forward is one this match made in bold: Glasgow have assembled a batting order of recognisable international names — Roy, Munsey, Livingstone, Berrington — and have now been bowled out or shut down under 145 in two of their three matches. The names are not the problem. The absence of anyone building a second partnership is.

Rotterdam Dockers are unbeaten after four — three wins and a no-result, seven points, second on net run rate behind Edinburgh Castle Rockers. They have now won by five wickets with eleven balls left, by five wickets with one ball left, and they keep finding a different player to do it: du Plessis, then Klaasen, now McDermott. Anrich Nortje's four overs for 20 with a maiden was the most disciplined new-ball spell of the night.

Glasgow Cosmic drop to fourth with two points from three and a net run rate of -0.629. They face Amsterdam Flames next, and the fixture arrives at the right time: Amsterdam are bottom of the table and have not won yet. If Glasgow's top order cannot construct an innings against that attack, the questions get louder.