Key events
Wicket! Conway run out (Shadab) 21 (NZ 38-2)
Conway, seeing the need to go big, charges Rauf’s first ball and chips it for four, inside-out. Shot! But soon there’s a direct hit and the Pakistan players begin to celebrate … They’re right! The dangerous Conway dismissed by the dead-eye Shadab, proving Mel Jones’s point.
5th over: New Zealand 30-1 (Conway 14, Williamson 12) Another change as Afridi gives way to Mohammad Wasim. Some of the sense of theatre goes with Afridi, but Pakistan will still be happy enough. Five singles and a two: it’s as if the middle overs have started already.
4th over: New Zealand 23-1 (Conway 11, Williamson 8) The first bowling change from Babar Azam as Haris Rauf replaces Naseem Shah. Rauf has Conway’s number – he’s dismissed him four times for only 29 runs. Williamson, perhaps aware of this, takes more of the strike, which makes for a quiet over. The highlight is a straight push, more of a caress, for two – would have been four but for a good half-stop at mid-on. Mel Jones, on the boundary, says she feels the game could be decided by the fielding. She’s such a good commentator, confident and engaging.
Here we go @TimdeLisle, with two teams I’d love to win the thing (if, well, you know). This should be a cracker, it’s just a shame the used pitches are going to make the toss so crucial. But if anyone’s going to be able to roll a team up top, it’s Pakistan.
— Guy Hornsby (@GuyHornsby) November 9, 2022
3rd over: New Zealand 19-1 (Conway 10, Williamson 5) Afridi to Williamson: feels like a big moment. Williamson, usually so serene, plays a loose uppish drive, but it’s into the gap at extra cover and he picks up three. A couple of dots, then a couple of singles. Pakistan have bowled so well, yet it’s still been a run a ball. NZ need to get through the next three overs with only one more wicket, to set the stage for Glenn Phillips.
2nd over: New Zealand 14-1 (Conway 9, Williamson 1) At the other end, Naseem Shah starts strongly – line and length, dot dot dot. Conway whips one away for four, then comes very close to playing on as his back-foot dab flirts with the stumps. Then another four! It’s all happening.
“No idea how the match will go,” says Alistair Connor, “but I’m backing our twirlers (I’m from NZ).” They’ve been so impressive. “My daughter went to work in /emigrated to (time will tell) Melbourne a couple of weeks ago. She is French but has lived in Scotland for the last six years. I suggested she should follow the creekit, as a factor of integration. She asked me for bullet points / conversation starters.” Brave woman. “My suggestion to her was, if she is presenting herself as a New Zealander, she’d best avoid the subject completely. If she’s being French, she can just let them explain it all to her. But her boyfriend’s mum is from County Down, so I suggested they should be Ireland fans.” Choices, choices. I’m hoping she lets them explain it all to her, then hits them with a killer stat.
1st over: New Zealand 6-1 (Conway 1, Williamson 1) So this over went four, wicket overturned, wicket … what we need now is a single or two. Kane Williamson and Devon Conway provide them, and then, finally, there is a plain old dot. What a start: instant drama.
Wicket! Allen LBW b Shaheen Shah Afridi 4 (NZ 4-1)
The first ball of the match is straight-driven for four by Finn Allen! But Afridi bites back with the second, a classic inswinger, and Marais Erasmus raises the finger. Reviewed and reprieved! There was an inside edge. Next ball, same again! No inside edge… It’s plumb!
“Kia ora Tim,” says Graeme Simpson, “from a very nervous Aotearoa/New Zealand. Was on Eden Park with the lads after the 1992 semi as part of directing a doco on Marty Crowe.” Wow.
“His brother, Jeff, was the interviewer, hence, Crowe on Crowe. (Including a question about the rumours about Martin’s personal life.) Some hard men in tears that afternoon. However, Martin held his composure, waved to the crowd, freeze frame, fade to black with Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms and credits. We’d only started in Christchurch earlier in the week where NZ badly lost their last pool game to the Pakistanis. TVNZ had scheduled the doco for the following Tuesday, so, no sleep for the next 48 hours… RiP Marty.” Absolutely. A shame he didn’t live to see NZ make a habit of reaching finals.
Time for the anthems, and some body language. The Pakistan team sing theirs with belief, hand on heart. In the crowd, the cameras find hijabs and green wigs and broad smiles. The Kiwis sing theirs with belief too, stern-faced, arm in arm. The cameras don’t spot so many of their supporters.
Pitch: not looking its best
The pitch looks not so much worn as knackered. Shaun Pollock, out there as a pundit, says: “It’s jigsaw-puzzley, if you want to put it that way.” Polly, it’s you who wants to put it that way. And I’m struggling to see what you mean. Possibly this: the pitch is in pieces, and the players will have to put it together themselves.
Teams: both unchanged
Ch-ch-ch-changes? No thanks.
NZ 1 Finn Allen, 2 Devon Conway (wkt), 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Glenn Phillips, 5 Daryl Mitchell, 6 Jimmy Neesham, 7 Mitchell Santner, 8 Tim Southee, 9 Ish Sodhi, 10 Lockie Ferguson, 11 Trent Boult.
Pakistan 1 Mohammad Rizwan (wkt), 2 Babar Azam (capt), 3 Mohammad Haris, 4 Shan Masood, 5 Iftikhar Ahmed, 6 Mohammad Nawaz, 7 Shadab Khan, 8 Mohammad Wasim, 9 Haris Rauf, 10 Naseem Shah, 11 Shaheen Shah Afridi.
NZ win toss and bat
Captains used to chase, but this tournament has changed all that. Babar Azam calls heads, it’s tails, and Kane Williamson has no hesitation in saying ‘“we’ll have a bat”. There have been six games at the SCG, and five have been won by runs not wickets, including both of New Zealand’s wins here.
Preamble
Hello everyone and welcome to the first semi-final of the 2022 T20 World Cup. In five hours’ time, either New Zealand or Pakistan will have booked their place in the final. On form in this tournament, it should be New Zealand – but on past form in knock-outs between these sides, they don’t stand a chance.
NZ will lose because … (a) they’ve had three meetings with Pakistan in situations like this and lost the lot. (b) NZ, historically, are simply not as good at T20 as Pakistan, who lead them by 17 wins to 11, some way from the parity you might expect. (c) After their sorry start and sudden revival, it feels as if Pakistan are getting out their favourite moves again, the dance of the cornered tigers, 30 years on from the original.
Pakistan will lose because … (a) those three previous knock-out games against NZ are distant history, the most recent being 15 years ago, which, in T20 terms, is basically Victorian times. (b) Babar Azam, usually so serene, has been having a nightmare, making scores of 0, 4, 4, 6 and 25, and not even making them fast – those 39 runs have come off 63 balls, making you wonder if he is now a Sunil Gavaskar tribute act. (c) The match is in Sydney, where the ball turns, and NZ have two of the top seven spinners in the tournament in Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi – two of the top five if you go by performances at the SCG, where NZ have played twice and won twice, marmalising Australia and Sri Lanka.
In other words, as usual, there’s no way of telling who will win. Let’s just sit back and enjoy the duel between two entertaining teams, with Shaheen Shah Afridi’s pace and chutzpah coming up against Glenn Phillips’s penchant for sixes.
The forecast, by Australia’s rather soggy recent standards, is encouraging. Play starts at 7pm Sydney time, 8am in the UK, and I’ll be back 25 minutes before that with the toss and the teams.
Tim will be here shortly. While you wait, here’s Simon Burnton on Pakistan’s wild ride to the semi-finals.
The first semi-final of the T20 World Cup throws together two teams whose experience of the competition so far could not have been more different. Where New Zealand’s thumping victory over Australia in their opening game put them instantly in control of their group, Pakistan’s presence in the final four, having lost their first two games to India and Zimbabwe, feels like a minor miracle.
For the batter Shan Masood even playing in those games was extraordinary, given that during a net session before the first he was hit full on in the head by a vicious shot from Mohammad Nawaz.
“I took my helmet off, and I was walking across the nets to get some water, and then I heard someone saying, ‘Watch out!’ And before I could do anything I felt something hit my ear,” he says. “I went down, and my first thoughts were, it’s hit me really hard. I thought at least it would be a fracture or something. I was taken to hospital, but when the scan came out it was just bruising.
“Next day I was not allowed to partake in practice, but I passed every single concussion test, I was good to go. I did not have any practice before the game but I tried to reframe it. I said, ‘look, anything could have happened. I could have been in hospital. I could have been back home. But I’m actually here and I’m playing, so savour the occasion, make the most of it.’”