Lasith Malinga versus David Miller. It was supposed to be the yorker versus the big hit. It was supposed to be the cracking finish. But the pressure resulted in miscommunication and again, South Africa ended up on the wrong side of a chase.
With 15 runs needed off the final over and a finisher at the crease, the batting side is always in with a chance, even if that is narrowed by the presence of Malinga. South Africa, however, did not give themselves an opportunity to capitalise. Twin run-outs off the first two balls of the final over, including that of Miller's, left the tail-enders with too much to do against a team who has only lost defending a score of 160-plus twice in the past.
The real damage had been done four overs before when Albie Morkel threatened to take the game away with a couple of assertive sixes. The boom quickly turned to bust. Dinesh Chandimal saw Morkel's plan and moved himself to wide long-on, just square of where the two previous sixes had gone. Ajantha Mendis bowled a low full toss, the kind of delivery Morkel would have hit for six many times before but he didn't get enough on it. Chandimal took the catch inches inside and seemed to know South Africa's fate was sealed.
Sri Lanka appeared the more assertive side from the get-go even though South Africa were buoyed by Dale Steyn's return to full fitness. Their pace spearhead started off with a Pandora's box of an over. He went too full to Kusal Perera who took two fours and a six off him and gave himself two extra deliveries to bowl courtesy a pair of wides.
The last of them uprooted Tillakaratne Dilshan's off stump.
Kusal was less ambitious against Lonwabo Tsostobe, who used the slower ball well, but still managed to play the pick-up shot against both Tsotsobe and Morne Morkel. With a healthy covering of grass on the pitch, Morne found some extra bounce to account for Mahela Jayawardene, who was caught off a splice to mid-on. Despite the two wickets in the first six overs, Kusal's big-hitting took Sri Lanka to 51 for 2 at the end of the power-play.
AB De Villiers, captaining in place of the injured Faf du Plessis, introduced spin immediately after the fielding restrictions. JP Duminy started with some control but South Africa's fourth seamer, Albie was guilty of bowling too full. Kusal's fifty came up off 29 balls, the second fastest half-century scored against South Africa, with a single behind square on the leg side.
It was only when Imran Tahir came on that the squeeze was on. Sri Lanka's batsmen found him tricky to pick. Both Kusal and Kumar Sangakkara were foxed by the googly and the run-rate slowed. South Africa gave only 37 runs in the five-over period between 10 and 15 to peg Sri Lanka back.
Angelo Mathews tried to be the architect of a last five-over burst and deposited Tahir over long-on. Chandimal was stumped when he attempted the same, to give Tahir his best returns in T20 cricket of 3 for 26. Mathews batted into the last over and Sri Lanka collected 48 from the final five to set South Africa a challenging total.
Quinton de Kock gave South Africa a solid start when he guided them to 31 in the first three overs. He did not have to deal with Malinga in the opening exchanges, but when he did, de Kock's stumps were broken by a crunching yorker.
South Africa stuck to the strategy of holding de Villiers back and sent JP Duminy at No.3. Duminy's intent to give himself some time bore fruit in the ninth over. Thisara Perera was driven down the ground, slammed over long-on and then scooped for six. Ajantha Mendis was taken for 12 runs in the next over.
Duminy had Hashim Amla for company for 6.2 overs and put on fifty runs to give South Africa stability if not speed, which could come when Amla, the only batsman to have a strike-rate below 100, hit the ball straight to short cover. De Villiers was under some pressure but dealt with it well against both Mendis and Malinga. Mathews had the measure of him when he held back both the pace and the length to an advancing de Villiers, who top-edged.
With de Villiers gone, Duminy should have anchored the chase and left the slogging to Miller but could not hold back. He swept Senanayake to cow corner and South Africa's slide had begun. Despite the big-hitters at their disposal they lost six wickets for 42 runs and the chase unraveled to leave the margin looking closer than it actually was.
New Zealand 52 for 1 (Williamson 24*, B McCullum 16*) beat England 172 for 6 (Moeen 36, Lumb 33, Buttler 32, Anderson 2-32) by 9 runs (D/L method)
Brendon McCullum is such a master of the dark arts of Twenty20 that it seemed entirely appropriate that he should bat to a backdrop of thunder and lightning. But the storm in Chittagong was not a theatrical prop, it was real, and as the rain soon tippled down upon New Zealand's captain it also drenched him in a premature victory that left England awash with frustration.
New Zealand needed to bat for five overs, in reply to England's challenging but far from secure total of 172 for 6, to bring rain calculations into play in the event of a washed out match. When the first fork of lightning lit up the sky behind the bowler's arm, and caused McCullum to pull away from the crease with Stuart Broad about to enter his delivery stride, they still had to face two balls to make the match valid.
Unbeknown to the players, who do not carry laminated, rain-proofed D/L tables around their necks, not yet anyway, New Zealand needed one more run from the last two balls of Broad's over to claim victory if rain proved to wash out the rest of the game. There was nobody better to be at the crease in such a scenario than McCullum, a bullish batsman on the brink of becoming the first batsman to 2,000 T20I runs, a table he leads by a considerable margin.
McCullum gingerly blocked the next, as if fearing further meteorological intervention, then charged the last ball and whacked a full toss straight for six. It is the sort of thing he does anyway, but it was ideally timed. Broad's only over had cost 16 and, as the players left the field two balls into the next over, persistent rain wiped away any chance of a resumption, with New Zealand ultimately nine ahead of the Duckworth-Lewis target.
England would have had a par of around 180 in mind after watching the first match and adding on another 15 or 20 runs for the way in which evening dew had put some spice in the pitch and tipped the balance a little closer towards the batsmen.
They did not quite achieve it, but one indicator at midway held promise for them: their 172 for 6 was the highest total ever seen in Chittagong. They had set a challenging target and New Zealand had never beaten England on three previous occasions when batting second.
Such are the low expectations around England's challenge that there will have been a few cynical grunts from TV watchers when they launched their part in the tournament with a second-ball duck - it belonged to Alex Hales, who failed to work Kyle Mills' slower ball into the leg side and fell to one of two splendid catches by Corey Anderson, back pedalling at mid-off.
From that point, though, every England batsmen made some sort of contribution. They had unearthed a team batting display after a dreadful run of limited-overs form when they most needed one, although nobody managed to push on for the major score which would have made their position stronger. The least they deserved was a match played to a conclusion. Instead, their recent T20 record remains worse than every other nation bar Bangladesh.
New Zealand had also twice been whitewashed in recent times in one-day series in Bangladesh, but this was not about containing the opposition on low, suffocating tracks. New Zealand's pace bowlers, Tim Southee especially, became a little over-excited with the juice in the pitch and bowled too short, his first over going for 17.
The chief beneficiary was Moeen Ali.
England kept faith with him at No 3, even though his first five limited-overs matches in the West Indies had suggested a county batsman initially struggling to make the transition to international level: his selection is very much a hunch, the sort of hunch that selectors always say they are planning to avoid, but to which they invariably resort. This was his best England innings, powered by several lofted leg side blows, one of which produced his downfall as he deposited Corey Anderson to deep midwicket.
The sight of hessian sacks being pulled around the outfield to minimise evening dew had been an indicator of the slippery ball that might inhibit the spin bowlers in particular. England relied upon four pace bowlers and omitted the left-arm spinner Stephen Parry; New Zealand also left out a left-arm spinner, Anton Devcich, as well as Ronnie Hira.
By the time Anderson took his second catch, a diving effort on the cover boundary to dismiss Michael Lumb for 33, England had set up a reasonable platform - 76 for 3 off 8.4 - for their two most destructive T20 batsman, Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler. But Morgan, deceived by Southee's slower ball, departed to a curious walking shot, as if he was creeping from around a bush to dry his hands in a headwind.
Mitchell McClenaghan proved to be New Zealand's most resourceful bowler, but a tricksy contribution from Buttler, ended when he dragged on against Anderson, kept England in touch. Then came McCullum, the thunder and lightning, and gathering despair in the England dressing room.
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