Mousley's century leads England to victory in U19 World Cup Plate Final

​SCORECARD

​Dan Mousley hit his first Youth ODI century as England dominated Sri Lanka to win the Plate Final at the ICC U19 World Cup in South Africa, taking victory by 152 runs.

The Warwickshire batsman opened the innings and brought up his century during a 142-run third-wicket partnership with Jack Haynes and helped England to a formidable 279 for seven.

England lost Sam Young in the first over, with Mousley adding 58 with Jordan Cox before the Kent wicketkeeper was dismissed for 17.

Mousley and Haynes ticked along at five-an-over to take the score past 200 before Haynes was caught at mid-off for 68 trying to up the pace in the final 15 overs.

With George Hill falling for a duck, Joey Evison joined Mousley at the crease with 12 overs remaining. Mousley couldn’t carry his bat, however, falling in the 44^th over, stumped off the bowling of Kavindu Nadeeshan.

Evison’s power hitting alongside captain George Balderson propelled England up to 279, with Nottinghamshire’s Evison bringing up his 50 off 38 balls before being bowled by the final ball of the innings for 59.

With the ball, Balderson dismissed the dangerous Navod Paranavithana for a duck with the third ball of the innings before Kamil Mishara and Ravindu Rasantha added a quick 46 for the second wicket.

Left-arm spinner Lewis Goldsworthy made the breakthrough to bowl Mishara and pick up the first of his five wickets in the innings. The wicket prompted a regular flow of dismissals, with the final nine wickets falling for 81 runs.

Rasantha was the lone bright spot in the Sri Lankan innings, with his 66 from 81 balls seeing him move to the top of the World Cup run-scoring charts. Goldsworthy trapped the right-hander LBW and then quickly snapped up the final two wickets to cap his excellent tournament with the ball.

The Somerset all-rounder finishes the tournament with 12 wickets at an average of 9.58, with his economy rate of 2.34 by far the best in the competition. His five-wicket haul was England’s first at the U19 World Cup since Paul McMahon’s five for 25 against Nepal in 2002.

Fellow spinner Hamidullah Qadri also finished with 12 wickets and Mousley led the team with 241 runs at an average of 80 thanks to his century and two 50s.

QUOTES

George Balderson: “I’m very proud of the boys today – this is as well as we could have done in this tournament after losing the first two games, so I’m really happy with the performance.

“We didn’t really turn up in those first two games, but since then we’ve bounced back well as a group, trained hard and come back stronger.

“We wanted to take pace off the ball as much as possible in our bowling today. We knew our two spinners would be hard to get away because they’ve bowled amazingly well throughout the tournament. And with our controlling pace bowlers we knew it would be a tough chase for Sri Lanka.”

Dan Mousley: “I’ve really enjoyed opening the innings – I’ve been up and down the order recently, but opening is one of my favourite positions.

“We spoke a lot after the Zimbabwe game where I went quite hard and gave away my wicket, so we talked about giving myself 30 balls and then being able to catch up.

“Jack and I have played together since we were 13 or 14 years old, so we know our games really well. The way that Joey came in at the end and struck the ball cleanly moved us to a really competitive score.”