Captain Thomas Rew made a battling century as England booked their place in Friday’s final of the Under-19 World Cup with a 27-run win over Australia.<\/p>\n
England had looked in a perilous position at 60-3 following the dismissal of both openers and Ben Mayes, the tournament’s leading scorer, for 24 after Rew had won the toss and decided to bat.<\/p>\n
However, the 18-year-old hit a composed 107-ball 110 to help England post a competitive 277-7 from their 50 overs.<\/p>\n
Rew’s innings featured 14 fours and one six as he shared a valuable 135-run stand with Caleb Falconer, who chipped in with a patient 40 off 53 balls.<\/p>\n
Somerset wicketkeeper-batter Rew was dismissed in the 43rd over after Farhan Ahmed called him through for a risky single and Steven Hogan threw down the stumps at the striker’s end.<\/p>\n
Ahmed made partial amends by again giving England’s innings some late impetus with another cameo as he finished unbeaten on 28 off 26 balls.<\/p>\n
Hayden Schiller finished the pick of the Australia bowlers with 2-31, including a peach of a delivery to bowl Mayes.<\/p>\n
Australia had looked in a comfortable position at 109-2 after a dogged 47 off 83 balls from opener Nitesh Samuel.<\/p>\n
But when Samuel was stumped by Rew off the bowling of left-arm spinner Ralphie Albert it opened the door for England. <\/p>\n
Manny Lumsden removed Alex Lee-Young and Jayden Draper in quick succession as Australia lost three middle-order wickets for 25 runs.<\/p>\n
Oliver Peake steadied the ship for England with a defiant half-century off 55 balls.<\/p>\n
The game looked to be England’s for the taking when Albert removed Australia’s eighth wicket with the score on 207 only for Peake to up the ante.<\/p>\n
Peake took 22 runs off a Lumsden over then brought up a century off 85 balls shortly after Charles Lachmund was bowled by Sebastian Morgan.<\/p>\n
With 28 needed off 16 balls and just one wicket in hand, Peake sliced a drive off James Minto into the hands of Mayes at point and England’s players celebrated.<\/p>\n
“It’s a great feeling,” said Rew. “I spoke to the boys and told them to enjoy it.<\/p>\n
“The way Ollie [Peake] batted was incredible but to get over the line is special. I was nervous at the end but I backed the bowlers, that’s what they train for – to nail those yorkers at the back end under pressure.”<\/p>\n
England have won the U19 World Cup once – in 1998 – and were beaten finalists in 2022. They will play either India or Afghanistan in Friday’s final (07:30 GMT).<\/p>\n
There will be ball by ball commentary of the final on BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra and the BBC Sport website and app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Captain Thomas Rew made a battling century as England booked their place in Friday’s final of the Under-19…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-406124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}