Ben Stokes guides nervy England through to World Cup semi-finals

By Charlie On Nov 5, 2022

England 144 for 6 (Hales 49, Stokes 42*) beat Sri Lanka 141 for 8 (Nissanka 67, Wood 3-26) by four wickets

England are through to the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup, knocking Australia out in the process, thanks to a four-wicket win over Sri Lanka.

It was an anxiety-riddled chase in the final match in Group 1, despite a target of 142 looking well within reach after openers Jos Buttler and Alex Hales posted 75 for the first wicket inside eight overs. But a series of unforced errors saw six wickets fall in the space of 65 deliveries, for the addition of just 54. The trio of Wanindu Hasaranga, Dhananjaya de Silva and Lahiru Kumara split those dismissals evenly between them and for a moment an upset looked well and truly on the cards.

But Ben Stokes – as ever – saw England over the line with 42 from 36 that only contained two fours but allowed a constant ticking over the score to drag his team along before Chris Woakes’ cut for four confirmed victory with two balls left. It was a far closer than it should have been, England having fought back strongly to Sri Lanka to a modest total after opener Pathum Nissanka (67 off 45) got them off to a flyer.

For Australia, now officially done as defending champions, they will wonder what might have been having relinquished the opportunity to surpass England’s net run rate with their own modest win over Afghanistan on Friday.

For all the latest Sports News Click Here

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! TechAI is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.