It was the penultimate game of the group stage when Eagles took on Sussex and the winner would proceed to the next stage to join New South Wales from their group.
Batting 1st on winning the toss Sussex was restricted to 119/7 and the Eagles seemed to be cruising towards the target when nerves first got the better of the batsmen and then in the last over when 12 were required, Yasir Arafat couldn’t control his line and length. The match ended up in a tie and the thriller was then decided in the ‘Super Over’.
The Eagles scored 9 in the Eliminator and Sussex lost both their wickets off the 1st two balls of their innings, thereby handing the side from South Africa a win and an entry into the next stage of the tournament.
Sussex went into this match with their regular skipper, Micheal Yardy back in the team and they also got the additional boost of having star allrounder Luke Wright back in the side. By hitting the very 1st ball that he faced for a maximum, Wright showed the value of his presence in the side. Another 6 and a boundary followed but he was dismissed thereafter and after him, none of the other batsmen could get any kind of momentum.
The run rate dropped dramatically and eventually five of the six Eagles bowlers ended up with an economy rate of under 6 runs per over. Joe Gatting was the top scorer for the side with 25 that came from 22 balls while for the Eagles, Dillion du Preez and Cornelius de Villiers picked up 2 wickets each.
The Eagles chase was one without any hiccup for a large part of the match and after 10 overs when 70 runs had been scored without the loss of a single wicket, this match seemed to be going only one way.
Rilee Rossouw was doing the bulk of the scoring though and by the end of the 11th over, he’d brought up his half-century that came of only 39 balls. Quite dramatically though, wickets started to fall then and like it often happens when wickets fall, the scoring rate too started to drop. Thanks mainly to Dwayne Smith and Hamilton-Brown, over numbers 11 to 19 yielded only 38 runs and 12 were still required of the last over. Also, Rossouw was out in the 19th over for a well made 62 ball 65. Arafat who bowled the last over conceded only 3 of his 1st three deliveries but with 9 required from the next three, Ryan McLaren hit the next one for a boundary. The 5th delivery was a dot ball and with 5 needed to win of the last ball, McLaren hit another 4 thereby ensuring that the match ends in a tie and enters into a ‘Super Over’.
Eagles who’ve had the experience of playing in an Eliminator during their domestic competition were to bat 1st and their chosen batsmen, Rossouw and McLaren scored 9 in the over with the former hitting a 6 of the 4th ball of the over. Sussex would have fancied to get 10 from the over but they ended up losing the match in the 1st two balls. Both, Dwayne Smith and Hamilton Brown found their stumps on the ground as de Villiers clean bowled both of them. De Villiers was clearly the man of the moment then but quite deservedly, it was their star hitter for the day, Rilee Rossouw who was declared the ‘Man of the Match’.