England A's tour ends as Guyana advances to final

Kate Laven

February 27, 2001

England A's tour of the West Indies ended prematurely today when they were knocked out of the Busta International Shield after a seven wicket defeat by Guyana at Bourda.

Their hopes of reaching the final were dashed when they were quickly bowled out for 247 in their second innings, leaving Guyana plenty of time - 70 overs - to make the 205 runs needed for victory which earns them a place in the final against Jamaica next weekend.

It brings to an end their undefeated record which has spanned more than six years and 43 games and it may also bring to an end of the England A touring tradition which started in 1989/90 with a tour to Zimbabwe.

Next winter, the England and Wales Cricket Board's Academy is expected to be up and running with England's second layer winter touring party likely to be selected from its ranks.

Within hours of losing the semi-final after a lacklustre day for the tourists, they were due to board an early morning flight out of Georgetown headed for Barbados with the journey home to England planned for Friday.

But as far back as Saturday when they failed to capitalise on a decent batting track, making 293 in their first innings, England A were on the back foot. Today, resuming on 165 for three, they lost their last seven wickets in 90 minutes for just 82 runs leaving Guyana with the rest of day to gather the runs.

Only Chris Read, who was the gamble selection in this game after a disappointing tour, showed any capacity for keeping the scoreboard ticking over without taking too many risks. He finished unbeaten on 29 but England A's total never looked sufficient to put their opponents under any pressure.

Seonarine Chattergoo and Azumeel Haniff gave their push for victory a comfortable start by putting on 40 for the first wicket but the next pairing of Haniff and Travis Dowlin made certain of their final place with a stand of 102. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who has been out of cricket with an injury for three months, hurried proceedings along with 49 from 43 balls and scored the winning run to send England A out of the competition after an eight week campaign.

"Our first innings was the main problem," said skipper Mark Alleyne after the game.

"We didn't bat as authoritatively as we should have done. It was hard work for 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 but it was difficult because they were being negative - they didn't have to chase the game, we had to do all the running and they could put as many people on the boundary as they liked.

"We needed time to bowl them out so we were trying to get to a total so we could get a good seventy overs out of them and we fell short, but it was a chance we had to take. It was our only chance of winning the match and getting through to the final.

"I'm not too worried about the England A record. The only way we could get through to the final was to win the match and to win the match we had to take a chance of losing it. The easy option was to not try and win it and we would still have been on the flight home so I would rather have taken the punt and try and win the game," he said.

"There were some good performances. Chris Schofield did well again though when the pressure is on, he maybe is not as consistent as he would like to be. Chris Read came back well. After a quiet tour, I felt he kept and batted really well in this game and we are pleased that we went with him because it was a huge game and he didn't let us down. Bowling wise, the guys tried hard but no one really starred in this match.

"The most disappointing thing about all this was that when the pressure was really on, we didn't really react as positively as we can do. We have to be a bit better than that - we let a few things upset us a bit and lost a bit of focus but once again, I would hope that if it happened again, we would cope a lot better."

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Series/Tournaments

Busta Cup

England A tour of West Indies

Teams

British Guiana

England

Guyana

West Indies