Great farces of our time: the bowl-out

Surrey have enjoyed making heavy weather of their victories lately. Monday night’s quarter-final in the 20-over comp came down to a Duckworth-Lewis tie (Duckworth-Lewis tie in a 20 over game? sheesh). But instead of doing the obvious – five overs each way of extra time, and if it’s a draw come back Wednesday morning for the replay – they went for the next most obvious tie-breaker, the penalty shootout… er, the bowl-out.

In a match were no one reached 35 runs with the bat, Warwickshire found themselves needing 118 for victory in 15 overs after Surrey’s twenty yielded 149. Warwickshire made 117, and the game was on! At least, once the umpires sorted out what was happening. (Read this apology issued by way of an ECB media release on Tuesday.)

Jeff Green describes what happened in the bowl-out.

More coverage of Monday night’s madness from:

But Ivo Tennant’s article in Wednesday’s Times, Teenager leaves professionals stumped in bowl-out skills, puts things into true perspective…

As for the name of this tie-breaking monstrosity, it does indeed seem to be the Bowl-Out and not the Bowl-Off, which I always preferred for its similarity to a Bake-Off, which would probably be just as effective a means of settling this game..

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