da spicy bet： Alec Stewart – Man of the Match Man of the Series Man of the Summer
Andy Jalil22-Jul-2000
Alec Stewart –
Man of the Match
Man of the Series
Man of the Summer?
Photo © AllSport
England’s confidence grows
England/Zimbabwe at Lord’sAlec Stewart’s phenominal appetite for run scoring continued unabated atLord’s today as he dominated the Zimbabwe bowling and played the major rolein England’s victory by the comfortable margin of six wickets in the finalof the NatWest Series.The England batting was built around him once again, as it has been so oftenin this series. Although England made a poor start in chasing 170 runs forvictory, loosing the first two wickets on nine, Stewart showed composure inholding the innings together at that early stage and then settled into a143-run stand with Graeme Hick, 43, as they batted with growing confidence.Stewart, having hit successive centuries in his previous two innings whichhad followed an unbeaten 74 prior to that, again led the way, batting withpanache and playing his shots fluently right through his brilliant innings.He drove with fine timing and was quick to pull anything short.His innings ended when England were a mere 21 short of their target. On 97,having hit two consecutive boundaries, he attempted a cut to a ball that wasnot that short of a length, and edged a catch behind the stumps. Those threeruns that he fell short of would have made him the third batsman to havescored three successive hundreds in limited overs cricket. The feat has onlybeen achieved by Pakistan batsmen, Saeed Anwar and Zaheer Abbas.Stewart and Trescothick have set example for other batsmen to followStewart leads on aggregate with 408 runs in this competition and hisperformance in this match and, indeed, in this tournament, was enough forhim to be named the man-of-the-match as well as the man-of-the-series.Despite Stewart’s outstanding form and Marcus Trescothick having impressed,especially with his earlier batting in this series, England battinggenerally has not come off either in this series or in the two Tests played against West Indies. No doubt, that is one area that they will need to addressbefore the Test series resumes early next month.Earlier, in the Zimbabwe innings, after they had been asked to bat, twoquick incisions had crippled their batting to an extent that had made recovery an onerous task in the face of some accurate England bowling. Darren Goughstruck with his first ball having Guy Whittall edge the only delivery hereceived to a wide second slip and four overs later Gough brought one insharply to Murray Goodwin who could only play it on to his stumps. Gough’sexcellent bowling eventually brought him three for 20 from his ten overs.If two wickets down for twelve was a severe blow, particularly when one ofwhich was the wicket of Goodwin, who is the only Zimbabwean with a century -an unbeaten one, too – to his credit in this series, then it looked evenworse when Allan Mullally had Alastair Campbell caught with the total on 31.Zimbabwe’s stalwarts bid farewellHowever, with Neil Johnson, who is making his farewell appearance forZimbabwe, as is Goodwin, one taking up residency across the border in SouthAfrica and the other, Goodwin, returning to Western Australia where he grewup learned to play cricket, Zimbabwe still had expectations of staging arecovery.But England’s bowlers had other ideas. They kept the pressure on andalthough there wasn’t a significant ball movement except some from Gough andMullally, they did not stray in their line and direction.Caddick bowled his allotted ten overs in one spell and in his eighth over hebowled Johnson. Zimbabwe were 31 for four and 21 of those were scored byJohnson. All but one of those runs had come from boundaries. He chose hisstrokes carefully, avoided risky singles and waited for the loose balls tohit.Flowers salvage prideWith not a great deal of batting left, it was all up to the Flower brothers,the only specialist batsmen remaining, to salvage something from an inningsthat was in tatters. Grant Flower, who heads the Zimbabwe averages in thiscompetition, duly obliged along with Andy, and the two of them set aboutbringing some respectability to the score.With only fifteen overs having been bowled when their stand began, they hadthe time if not the wickets to work on the recovery. They went about it withsome caution but did not miss the opportunity to pick up runs.Andy Flower played more freely while Grant showed a little more restrain.They faced 161 balls during their 89-run partnership, taking the total to120 when Andy fenced at a ball from Craig White without moving across for it andedged behind for a catch. He had batted patiently for two hours and missed adeserving half-century by two runs.Grant Flower remained unbeaten after reaching his second half-century of thecompetition. It was mainly their effort that took the totat to 169 for sevenbut it never looked enough.