Reflecting on the U19 Cricket World Cup

By Keith Miller

So, the competition is over, and India are the dominant champions, winning the second edition to go with their win in the inaugural tournament in 2023.  Sunday’s final was a huge disappointment – South Africa failed to make the semi-finals in 2023 but looked really comfortable this time around.  Unfortunately for them, they appeared unable to change their game plan when it mattered the most, and India completely choked them out of the contest in a thoroughly impressive performance.

In their 7 games unbeaten, India lost the grand total of 15 wickets – and 9 of those came in one innings against Sri Lanka.  To highlight their dominance further, Player of the Tournament Trisha Gongadi scored almost twice as many runs (309) as her closest rival, England’s Davina Perrin (176).  Trisha also scored the only century of the tournament and chipped in with 3-15 in the final to mark herself down as a genuine international prospect.

There were some positives to come out of the tournament, but the fact that only 4 batters could score in excess of 50 (with Kamalini G doing it twice) was very telling.  This was a tournament totally dominated by the ball, and whilst the wickets themselves looked perfectly adequate, the real problem was the outfield across several grounds.  Most looked like a mud pool, a sandpit, or in some cases, both, making boundary hitting in some cases almost impossible.  This was extremely unfortunate, as the ground staff looked to be doing a tough job in tough circumstances to get any play in at all on most days.

In retrospect, perhaps holding a cricket tournament in a place like Sarawak during the North East Monsoon Season may not have been the brightest idea.

Overall, the quality of ground fielding (and catching) was very good – this coming in a discipline of the game in which a lot of emerging nations traditionally struggle.  From a wicketkeeping perspective, England’s Katie Davis was amazing to watch, taking 7 stumpings in the tournament.  Lock her in for future honours.

From a New Zealand perspective, the tournament can only be classed as disappointing.  They suffered badly with all pool play games being rain affected, which means they barely got going.  In saying that, nobody saw a loss to Nigeria on the cards.  They looked panicked with both bat and ball during that game, and when you consider the first game for Nigeria was washed out completely, it was even more of a shock.

Like many other teams, the batting was the issue.  Emma McLeod (81) and Eve Wolland (80) led the way, and while there were a couple of good contributions from Kate Irwin, the rest of the batting simply wasn’t up to par.

On the New Zealand’s bowling front, Rishika Jaswal was the most successful wicket taker with 8, and Tash Wakelin next with 6.  Sophie Court took 4 at a miserly economy rate of 3.87, and the fact she only bowled one over in the first game against South Africa was a little curious.

The likes of Samoa were always going to struggle but watching them being dismissed for 16 against South Africa was hard going.  In saying that, they – as other emerging nations did – improved throughout the tournament.

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