Nine for Four, and the Best Batting Line-Up in the Tournament Made 93 — Edinburgh's Bowlers Break Rotterdam at Voorburg

For thirteen overs this looked like the day Rotterdam Dockers went top of the ETPL. They won the toss, bowled, and took Edinburgh Castle Rockers apart with the new ball — three down for fourteen inside three overs, the powerplay conceding 28 — and when they finally finished the job in the twentieth, the Rockers had 148 and Rotterdam had a chase they were built to win.

Their batting card reads Michael Levitt, Faf du Plessis, Vikramjit Singh, Ben McDermott, Heinrich Klaasen, Ben Manenti, Saqib Zulfiqar, David Wiese, Roelof van der Merwe. Nine internationals. It is, on paper, the deepest batting line-up in the competition.

They were nine for four after 2.6 overs and were bowled out for 93. Edinburgh won by 55 runs, went four points clear at the top of the table, and are still the only unbeaten side in the tournament.

Edinburgh's innings was a rescue job twice over. JJ Smuts was caught by Faf du Plessis in the second over, Andries Gous was bowled four balls later, Ross Adair went in the third, and at 14 for 3 with David Wiese having taken two and Jai Moondra one, the Rockers were in the kind of trouble that usually ends at 110.

Brandon McMullen and Laurie Evans stopped it. McMullen made 37 from 28 with two sixes and was caught off Anrich Nortje at 60 for 4 in the ninth; Evans hung on for 33 from 31 and took Edinburgh past 100 in the thirteenth. Neither innings was pretty. Both were necessary.

The one that changed the shape of the total belonged to Gareth Delany, in at 60 for 4 and out at 107 for 5 — 31 from 18 balls, two fours and two sixes, in a partnership of 47 with Evans that turned a total heading for 120 into one worth 148. He was named Player of the Match for it, which in a game featuring three-wicket hauls on both sides tells you how highly the panel rated that intervention.

Rotterdam's four frontline bowlers were superb: Moondra 3 for 19, Wiese 3 for 18 with a maiden, Nortje 3 for 23, van der Merwe 1 for 29. Fifteen and a half overs, 89 runs, ten wickets. The problem was the other five overs — Vikramjit Singh's three cost 35, and Saqib Zulfiqar's single over cost 22. Fifty-seven runs from four overs, in a match Rotterdam lost by 55.

Tom Curran bowled the second over of the chase and had Michael Levitt caught by Ross Adair off the second ball; three deliveries later Vikramjit Singh was bowled. Two for two. Trent Boult then had Ben McDermott caught at 8 for 3 in the third, and off the last ball of that same over Heinrich Klaasen was run out by Laurie Evans for one.

Nine for four in 2.6 overs. Klaasen, one of the two or three most destructive T20 batters alive, faced a single delivery.

Faf du Plessis tried to rebuild — 21 from 19 with four fours, the only Rotterdam innings that had any authority about it — and was caught by Adair off Mitchell Santner at 40 for 5 in the seventh. Ben Manenti made 16 from 13. Saqib Zulfiqar was bowled by Santner for six. Wiese was caught and bowled by Mark Watt. Seventy-one for nine after 12.4 overs.

Then Anrich Nortje and Jai Moondra, the last pair, batted out more than five overs and added 22 — more than any other Rotterdam partnership in the innings except du Plessis and Manenti. Nortje was finally bowled by Curran for 11 from 18. It is a small dignity, and it also underlines the point: Rotterdam's Nos. 10 and 11 lasted longer than their top four combined.

Edinburgh's bowling figures are the story of the discipline behind it. Curran 4-1-16-3. Santner 4-0-17-2. Watt 4-0-23-2. Boult 3-0-18-1. JJ Smuts, the part-timer, 2-0-6-1. Nobody went at more than six an over except Jack Jarvis's single over. Twenty overs, 93 runs, ten wickets — and only seven extras conceded.

Twenty wickets fell for 241 runs, which is a bowler's day at Sportpark Westvliet, and both new balls did something — Edinburgh lost three inside three overs, Rotterdam lost four inside three. The powerplay comparison is unusually clean: Edinburgh 28 for 3, Rotterdam 37 for 4.

But the surface does not explain a 55-run margin. Both sides faced the same movement with the same ball, and one of them found batters — McMullen, Evans, Delany, and Santner slugging 15 from 8 at the death — who were prepared to play straight and wait. The other kept looking for boundaries in the third over of a chase against Curran and Boult.

Rotterdam won the toss and chose to field on a pitch where the ball was going to do most in the first hour. That is a defensible call — they nearly bowled Edinburgh out for 120 — but it committed them to batting second on a surface that never fully settled, and after Curran's over it was academic.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — we'll have full analysis for the next Rockers and Dockers fixtures. What we can own is a running read: after Rotterdam beat Dublin on September 2, we noted their bowling had become the most reliable in the tournament and their batting the least examined, because they had chased 141, 179 and 158 without ever being asked to survive a genuine new-ball spell. That bill arrived here. Nine for four is the answer to a question we had flagged and had not properly weighted.

Edinburgh Castle Rockers are top with nine points from five — four wins, one no-result, no defeats — and a net run rate of 3.052 that is now nearly six times better than anyone else's. They have scored 563 in 65.1 overs and conceded 447 in 80. Their remaining fixtures are Glasgow Cosmic, Dublin Guardians and Amsterdam Flames, which is the three sides below fourth. Barring something strange, they finish first.

Rotterdam Dockers stay third on seven points — level with Belfast Wolves but behind on net run rate, which this defeat dragged to -0.340. They have Amsterdam, Glasgow and Belfast left, and the Belfast game on the final weekend now looks like a straight shootout for second. The batting question is real and urgent: they have the names, they have not had to prove it, and on the one day someone asked them to, they made 93.

The performance to carry forward is Tom Curran's. Four overs, one maiden, sixteen runs, three wickets — including both openers inside the first two overs and the last man to finish it. On a ground where his team-mates Boult and Santner have bigger reputations, he bowled the spell that decided the match.