Dockers Beat Flames by Five Wickets — the ETPL's First Match Belonged to a 42-Year-Old Who Refused to Leave

Inaugural matches are usually forgettable. The teams do not know themselves yet, the overseas players have met each other in an airport, and somebody makes 140 and somebody else fails to chase it. The European T20 Premier League got something better on Wednesday evening at Voorburg: a total that had to be built by one man against a genuinely serious attack, and a chase that had to be rescued by another after his side lost three wickets in the first four overs.

Rotterdam Dockers won by five wickets with eleven balls remaining. The scoreboard makes it look straightforward. It was 22 for 3 in the fourth over, and the only reason it did not stay that way is that Faf du Plessis was still there — 83 not out from 55 balls, unbeaten at the end as he had been unbeaten at every point after the third wicket fell, having come in during the second over and still been there at the end.

Du Plessis came in at 5 for 1 in the second over, which is not the entrance a captain plans for the first night of a new competition. By the fourth over he had lost Ben McDermott bowled by Kyle Klein and then, three balls later, Heinrich Klaasen caught behind by Scott Edwards for a three-ball duck — the single most alarming dismissal on the card, because Klaasen is the reason a chase of 158 was supposed to be routine. Rotterdam were 22 for 3 in 3.6 overs and the powerplay closed at 54 for 3.

What du Plessis did next was not spectacular so much as unhurried. He got to fifty from 26 balls with five fours and two sixes — which is spectacular, on the numbers — but the point is that almost all of it came in partnership rather than in isolation. The fourth-wicket stand with Ben Manenti brought 50 from 21 deliveries, du Plessis contributing 33 of them, and it turned a chase that required 136 from 96 into one that required 53 from 51 by the time Manenti fell for an 18-ball 30.

He then lost Saqib Zulfiqar to a run-out and had to start again, this time with David Wiese. They put on 43 unbroken. Wiese's 27 not out from 17 was the sort of cameo an allrounder plays when the hard work is already done, and Rotterdam got home with eleven balls to spare. Du Plessis finished on 83 from 55 — seven fours, two sixes, and not a single ball after the third over on which he looked like being dismissed.

Amsterdam's 157 for 8 was almost entirely Bas de Leede, and it is worth being precise about the conditions in which he made it. Rotterdam's attack was Nortje, Wiese, van der Merwe, Logan van Beek and Jai Moondra — an international-standard bowling unit by any measure this side of a full member's first-choice XI. De Leede faced 53 balls and hit 75, reaching fifty from 41, and he was the only Flames batter to pass 25.

The failures around him were expensive rather than shameful. Max O'Dowd hit four fours in a 15-ball 25 and was bowled by Wiese. Curtis Campher made 17 from 20 and Tim David 1 from 3, both off Roelof van der Merwe — Campher caught by du Plessis, David by Wiese. Van der Merwe bowled his four overs for 21 and was the pick of the attack. Scott Edwards made 17 from 14 before Wiese found him. Michael Bracewell was run out by du Plessis for 1. In the space of the innings, five of Amsterdam's top seven were dismissed for 17 or fewer.

De Leede was eventually lbw to Nortje at 148 for 7 in the nineteenth over, having survived a Rotterdam lbw review in the third over and then burned Amsterdam's own review on the way out, the decision standing on umpire's call. The last eleven deliveries produced nine runs and one further wicket. Amsterdam had been 123 for 5 when Edwards fell in the sixteenth over; the acceleration they needed after that never arrived.

The surface at Sportpark Duivesteijn played true and a little slow — 7.85 an over for the first innings and 8.69 for the second, with both powerplays producing wickets rather than runs (Amsterdam 56 for 2, Rotterdam 54 for 3). What it rewarded was the bowler who hit a hard length and made the batter manufacture pace, which is precisely why van der Merwe's 4-0-21-2 and Wiese's 4-0-28-2 look better in context than they do on paper, and why Curtis Campher's two overs for 27 look worse.

It also explains the shape of the winning innings. Du Plessis played only two shots over the rope in 55 balls. On a ground where the ball did not come on, he ran, worked the angles, and took the aerial risk only against the bowlers whose lengths he had already read.

Kyle Klein deserves more than a footnote. He took 3 for 34 from four overs — McDermott bowled, Klaasen caught behind, Manenti caught by de Leede — and in the first four overs of the chase he had, briefly, made the Dockers' star-laden top order look like a collection of names. In a league that will spend its opening fortnight being described as a showcase for imported reputations, the young Dutch seamer removed two of the biggest ones on the night. That the Flames still lost is not his fault; nobody else took more than one.

The match award, though, was never in doubt. There is a particular kind of innings that a 42-year-old plays when everyone younger has already been dismissed, and du Plessis played it: no panic in the first ten overs, no heroics required in the last three, and a captain's read of exactly how much risk the situation could afford at any given moment. The ETPL's first Player of the Match award went to the man who made the league's first match a contest instead of a formality.

This fixture did not have a CricIntel preview — the ETPL is new to the calendar and this was its opening night, so we had nothing on record to be right or wrong about. That changes from here: with the tournament now running at Voorburg through the coming week, we will have full previews for the remaining fixtures, and we will be honest about what we call.

Rotterdam take the competition's first two points and a net run rate that will look useful in a fortnight. The concern, buried under the win, is that the three specialist batters around their captain — Michael Levitt, Ben McDermott and Heinrich Klaasen — produced 12 runs between them from 17 balls; a side does not get to lean on its captain every night. For Amsterdam, the shape of the problem is clearer — Steve Smith did not feature on this card, and a line-up asking Bas de Leede to make 75 out of 157 while Tim David faces three balls is not yet the batting order it will be. Both teams are back at Voorburg this week, which in a compact tournament played at a single ground means the corrections come quickly or not at all.