Three Off the Last Ball, Two Scored — Hong Kong and Malaysia Tie on 209 and a Super Over Lasts Three Deliveries

Two hundred and nine, and two hundred and nine. A hundred overs of cricket in Bangi heat produced the same number twice, and then the whole thing was resolved in three deliveries by a man who had already made 44.

Malaysia will replay the last ball for a long while. Nine down, three runs required, Virandeep Singh on strike having batted for 106 deliveries and taken three wickets earlier in the day. He got two. Two hundred and nine each, and a Super Over.

And then, in the cruellest piece of casting the day could have arranged, Virandeep was handed the ball for it. Anshy Rath hit four, four and six. It was over in half an over.

Hong Kong chose to bat and made a mess of a good position twice. Anshy Rath and Babar Hayat took them to 69 in the sixteenth over; then two more fell for twenty runs and they were 89 for 4 in the twenty-third.

Kalhan Challu's 69 from 72 with eight fours rebuilt it. He came in at 69 for 2, was still there when the ninth wicket fell at 201, and was the last man out at 209, bowled by Arif Ullah with three and a half overs unused. It was the innings of a batter who understood that his side had nobody left and that batting time was worth more than boundaries — right up until it wasn't, because Hong Kong lost their last four wickets inside ten overs and were bowled out with 21 balls in hand.

The recovery from 161 for 8 came from Hassan Khan Mohammad, who hit two sixes in a 21-ball 24 and added 40 for the ninth wicket with Challu. That partnership — the third-largest of the innings — is the reason this match went to a Super Over rather than being a comfortable Malaysian win.

Malaysia's bowling was excellent and their fielding better. Aqeel Wahid took 4 for 39 from his ten. Virandeep Singh bowled ten overs for twenty-three and took three, including Babar Hayat bowled and both Aizaz Khan and Ehsan Khan caught. Between them, Wahid and Virandeep bowled twenty overs for 62 and took seven wickets. Only three extras were conceded in the entire innings.

Malaysia lost Nazmus Sakib to the sixth ball of the second over and Saif Ullah Malik at 12 for 2, and by the fifteenth over, at 66 for 3, Virandeep Singh was in. He did not leave the crease again.

He and Muhamad Syahadat put on 81 for the fourth wicket — Syahadat's 50 took 87 balls, which tells you exactly how difficult Ehsan Khan and Yasim Murtaza were making the middle overs — and at 147 for 3 in the thirty-fourth, Malaysia were ahead of the game.

Then Syahadat was caught behind, Syed Aziz was lbw to Ehsan Khan an over later, and Malaysia were 149 for 5. Sharvin Muniandy went lbw to Yasim Murtaza at 162. From there, Virandeep farmed what he could: 36 for the seventh wicket with Muhammad Amir took Malaysia to 198 in the forty-eighth, and suddenly twelve were needed from twelve balls with three wickets standing.

Vijay Unni was caught at 205 for 8 in the fiftieth. Prashant Madhukar was run out at 207 for 9 with one ball left. Three to win, two to tie, Virandeep on strike, Arif Ullah — who had not faced a delivery all innings — at the other end.

He hit it for two. Eighty-two not out from 106 balls: six fours, one six, a ten-over spell of 3 for 23 earlier in the day, and a tie.

Malaysia batted first. Aizaz Khan had Syed Aziz caught by Shahid Wasif off the very first ball, which in a Super Over is close to fatal. Virandeep, inevitably, was next in, and made nine from three including a six. Nazmus Sakib got two. Eleven from the over, target twelve.

Syed Aziz gave the ball to Virandeep Singh — the most economical bowler in the match, ten overs for twenty-three — which was defensible on the numbers and merciless on the man. Anshy Rath hit two fours and a six in three deliveries. Fourteen from half an over. Hong Kong had won.

Rath was named Player of the Match for 44 in the innings and 14 not out from three balls at the end of it, and the citation is fair: he gave Hong Kong the platform and then he finished the job. But the performance that will be remembered longer is Virandeep's — 3 for 23, 82 not out, and then fourteen conceded from three balls, all in the same day.

The YSD-UKM Cricket Oval was the slowest surface of the round. Hong Kong scored at 4.49 an over and were bowled out; Malaysia scored at 4.18 and were not. Nineteen wickets fell in 96.3 overs and the two highest scores in the match — 82 not out and 69 — both took more than 70 deliveries.

Spin dominated in the way it has all week in Bangi. Ehsan Khan's ten overs cost 29 with four maidens; Yasim Murtaza's ten cost 28; Virandeep Singh's ten cost 23. Thirty overs of slow bowling for eighty runs. On a pitch like this the fifty-over game becomes an attritional exercise, and the two sides that arrived at the same total did so by completely different routes: Hong Kong through a top-order stand and a ninth-wicket rescue, Malaysia through one man batting from the fifth over to the last.

Hong Kong conceded nineteen extras, twelve of them wides; Malaysia conceded three. That is a sixteen-run head start handed to the chasing side, and Malaysia still could not convert it. In a match decided by a single run off the final delivery, it is the number both dressing rooms will keep returning to.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — we'll have full analysis for Hong Kong's meeting with Nepal and Malaysia's with Bahrain. Our read after Malaysia's 93-run win over Saudi Arabia on September 1 was that Virandeep Singh had become the most valuable cricketer in Group A, and after Bahrain beat Hong Kong by 32 on September 2 we questioned whether Hong Kong's batting had enough beyond Rath and Babar Hayat. Both reads held: Virandeep produced a genuine all-round match-winning performance and still finished on the losing side, and Hong Kong's 209 was rescued by a ninth-wicket partnership rather than built by their top order.

Hong Kong go top of Group A on four points from three — won, lost, won, with the tie counting as a win via the Super Over — and face Nepal next, who have four points from two and have won both by huge margins. That game will decide first place.

Malaysia drop to third on two points from three, level with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, with Bahrain to come. Two defeats in a row after starting with a 93-run win, and this one will hurt more than the six-wicket loss to Nepal because it was there to be won on the last ball of the fiftieth over.

Virandeep Singh has now taken 3 for 23 and made 82 not out in the same fixture, which is the sort of line that usually sits under a photograph of a man holding a trophy. Instead he will remember three deliveries. Cricket does this to people who deserve better.