Four Balls With the Bat, Three Overs With the Ball: Uganda Beat Rwanda by 64 Runs in the ILT20 Africa Continent Cup 7th Match

Uganda won by 64 runs at the Gahanga B Ground on Friday, and the margin is the least interesting number on the scorecard. The interesting one is four. That is how many deliveries Cosmas Kyewuta faced. He hit three of them for six, made 18, and turned a good Uganda total into an awkward one.

Then he bowled three overs for 20 and took three wickets. Twenty-two deliveries of involvement across four hours of cricket, and by the end of it he was holding the Player of the Match award. There are shifts in this game that last a session; this one lasted about the length of a drinks break.

Around him, though, was a proper contest. Uganda were 167 for 3 in the seventeenth over and looked set for 210 or more. Rwanda's spinners then took four wickets for 18 runs and had them 185 for 8. Rwanda's own chase reached 99 for 3 in the thirteenth. Both sides had their moment; only one of them kept it.

Uganda were 64 without loss after 5.2 overs, which is the kind of start that decides a T20 before anyone has settled into a seat. Anas Baig was the reason. His 66 came from 36 balls with five fours and five sixes — 50 of his runs in boundaries — and he was still there when the innings passed 100 in the eleventh over.

Rwanda's reply to that start was sharp and immediate. Muhammad Nadir had Robinson Obuya lbw at 64 and bowled Charles Musemez three balls later, two wickets in four deliveries without a run added. It bought Rwanda a hole in Uganda's order, but not much breathing room: Baig simply kept going, adding 51 with Olipa Gerald for the third wicket before Emile Rukiriza had him caught at 115 in the thirteenth.

Gerald's 45 from 32 and Riazat Ali Shah's 29 from 18 then took Uganda to 167 for 3 in the seventeenth over, and at that point the spinners went to work. Ignace Ntirenganya and Martin Akayezu took four wickets for 18 runs between overs 17 and 19 — Riazat bowled, Kenneth Waiswa and Juma Miyagi caught by Akayezu and Rukiriza, Cyrus Kakuru bowled. 167 for 3 had become 185 for 8 with four balls left. Rwanda were, in the narrowest sense, winning the death overs.

Then Kyewuta faced four balls and hit three of them into the Kigali sky. Thirteen runs came off the last four deliveries of the innings; Uganda finished on 198 for 9 rather than 185. Sixty-four runs was the eventual margin. It is not hard to work out where a chunk of it came from.

Rwanda lost Hamza Khan in the second over and then rebuilt properly. Didier Ndikubwimana and Isae Niyomugabo added 51 for the second wicket, and after Ndikubwimana was bowled by Matthew Musinguzi, Yves Cyusa came in and made 18 from 11. At 99 for 3 in the 13th over, with Niyomugabo set, the chase was still a chase — though a demanding one, with 100 needed from 44 balls, close to fourteen an over.

Between the 13th over and the 16th, Rwanda's order went out like a row of streetlights at dawn — one, then the next, then all of them. Cyusa caught at 99. David Uwimana bowled at 104. Emile Rukiriza bowled two balls later, still 104. Martin Akayezu lbw at 105. Ntirenganya bowled at 106. Niyomugabo caught at 107, having batted 43 balls for 38. Six wickets for eight runs, inside nineteen deliveries.

Joseph Baguma (4-0-20-3) and Matthew Musinguzi (4-1-23-3) did most of that damage, and Musinguzi's maiden was the only one of the match. Kyewuta's three came either side of it. What makes the collapse harsher for Rwanda is that it was not a case of chasing something impossible and throwing bats — six of those eight runs were scratched together in singles before the next man went.

The last pair added 27, more than any Rwandan partnership after the second wicket. Muhammad Nadir, who had taken two wickets earlier in the day, made 16 from 12 and was last out, lbw to Juma Miyagi, with seven balls of the innings unused.

Gahanga B gave both sides the same ball and the same outfield, and the difference came down to how each of them hit it in the air. Uganda struck 14 sixes and 16 fours — 148 of their 198 runs arrived in boundaries. Rwanda managed five sixes and 11 fours, 74 of their 134. On a ground where the run rate touched 9.90 in the first innings, that is the whole story of a 64-run defeat in two lines.

Rwanda's bowling, it should be said, was not the problem. Ntirenganya's 3 for 34 and Akayezu's 3 for 36 were both earned at the death, the hardest place to earn anything, and Nadir's 4-0-26-2 was the tightest spell of the innings. The leak came from the two overs at the other end of the workload chart: Zappy Bimenyimana's three overs went for 43 and Yves Cyusa's single over for 16, meaning four of Rwanda's twenty overs cost 59 runs.

And there were 22 extras — 10 byes, nine wides, two leg byes, one no-ball — in Rwanda's innings. Extras were the second-highest score on their card, behind only Niyomugabo's 38. Uganda gave away seven.

Player of the Match awards usually go to somebody who occupied the middle for an hour. Cosmas Kyewuta occupied it for four deliveries with the bat and eighteen with the ball, and there was no serious argument against him.

The batting first: he came in at 178 for 7 with the innings almost over and hit three sixes, 18 runs at a strike rate of 450, before being bowled by Ntirenganya off the last ball. That is 18 of the 20 runs Uganda scored while he was at the crease, and Uganda won by 64.

The bowling second, and it was the more complete piece of work: 3-0-20-3, the best economy rate among the five bowlers Riazat Ali Shah used. He bowled Hamza Khan in the second over to start the collapse-that-wasn't-yet, bowled Ntirenganya in the sixteenth, and had Niyomugabo — the one Rwandan who had actually solved the chase — caught by Robinson Obuya two balls later. He also took the catch that removed Oscar Manishimwe. Three wickets, a catch, three sixes. Cricket rarely rewards efficiency this neatly.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — we'll have full analysis for the next encounter.

Uganda take the two points; Rwanda take none. For Uganda, the encouraging part is that the win did not depend on Anas Baig alone — four batters passed 18, and five bowlers all went at under nine an over, three of them taking three wickets each. That is a side with more than one way to win a game.

For Rwanda, the fix is narrower than the scoreline suggests. They bowled well enough to restrict a strong batting side to 198 on a small ground, and they were 99 for 3 at the halfway mark of a chase of 199. What they lack is a middle order that can absorb two wickets without losing four more. Niyomugabo's 43-ball 38 was patient and valuable; what it needed was somebody at the other end still standing at the end of the 16th over.

Two smaller things to fix before the next one: the ten byes, and the four overs from Bimenyimana and Cyusa that cost 59. On this ground, in this competition, both of those are the difference between 198 and 175 — and 175 was a chase Rwanda might have got closer to.