da lvbet： England A’s tour of the West Indies ended prematurely today when they wereknocked out of the Busta International Shield after a seven wicket defeat byGuyana at Bourda
da prosport bet： Kate Laven27-Feb-2001England A’s tour of the West Indies ended prematurely today when they wereknocked out of the Busta International Shield after a seven wicket defeat byGuyana at Bourda.Their hopes of reaching the final were dashed when they were quickly bowledout for 247 in their second innings, leaving Guyana plenty of time – 70overs – to make the 205 runs needed for victory which earns them a place inthe final against Jamaica next weekend.It brings to an end their undefeated record which has spanned more than sixyears and 43 games and it may also bring to an end of the England A touringtradition which started in 1989/90 with a tour to Zimbabwe.Next winter, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s Academy is expected to beup and running with England’s second layer winter touring party likely to beselected from its ranks.Within hours of losing the semi-final after a lacklustre day for thetourists, they were due to board an early morning flight out of Georgetownheaded for Barbados with the journey home to England planned for Friday.But as far back as Saturday when they failed to capitalise on a decentbatting track, making 293 in their first innings, England A were on the backfoot. Today, resuming on 165 for three, they lost their last seven wicketsin 90 minutes for just 82 runs leaving Guyana with the rest of day to gatherthe runs.Only Chris Read, who was the gamble selection in this game after adisappointing tour, showed any capacity for keeping the scoreboard tickingover without taking too many risks. He finished unbeaten on 29 but EnglandA’s total never looked sufficient to put their opponents under any pressure.Seonarine Chattergoo and Azumeel Haniff gave their push for victory acomfortable start by putting on 40 for the first wicket but the next pairingof Haniff and Travis Dowlin made certain of their final place with a standof 102. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who has been out of cricket with an injuryfor three months, hurried proceedings along with 49 from 43 balls and scoredthe winning run to send England A out of the competition after an eight weekcampaign.”Our first innings was the main problem,” said skipper Mark Alleyne afterthe game.”We didn’t bat as authoritatively as we should have done. It was hard workfor the first hour but we got through that and should have posted a 350 +total. On reflection, we should have chosen some different shots today butit was difficult because they were being negative – they didn’t have tochase the game, we had to do all the running and they could put as manypeople on the boundary as they liked.”We needed time to bowl them out so we were trying to get to a total so wecould get a good seventy overs out of them and we fell short, but it was achance we had to take. It was our only chance of winning the match andgetting through to the final.”I’m not too worried about the England A record. The only way we could getthrough to the final was to win the match and to win the match we had totake a chance of losing it. The easy option was to not try and win it and wewould still have been on the flight home so I would rather have taken thepunt and try and win the game,” he said.”There were some good performances. Chris Schofield did well again thoughwhen the pressure is on, he maybe is not as consistent as he would like tobe. Chris Read came back well. After a quiet tour, I felt he kept and battedreally well in this game and we are pleased that we went with him because itwas a huge game and he didn’t let us down. Bowling wise, the guys tried hardbut no one really starred in this match.”The most disappointing thing about all this was that when the pressure wasreally on, we didn’t really react as positively as we can do. We have to bea bit better than that – we let a few things upset us a bit and lost a bitof focus but once again, I would hope that if it happened again, we wouldcope a lot better.”
