Drawn, with the scores level

England needed 205 from 37 overs on the last afternoon at Bulawayo, in the first Test the two countries had played. They got 204. Four wickets were standing when the overs ran out, so the match was not a tie. It was a draw with the scores level, which no Test match had ever been before.

The four days before it

Zimbabwe made 376, Andy Flower batting 331 balls for 112. England replied with 406, Nasser Hussain making 113 and John Crawley 112, and Paul Strang bowled 58.4 overs of leg spin for five wickets. Zimbabwe were 107 for five at the close of the fourth day and were bowled out for 234 on the fifth, Phil Tufnell taking four for 61.

That left 205 in the overs that remained, at a rate no Test side of the time was used to chasing.

The chase

Mike Atherton was bowled by Henry Olonga at 17. Nick Knight and Alec Stewart then put on 137 for the second wicket. Stewart made 73 from 76 balls with two sixes and was caught at 154. Hussain went for nought two balls later. Crawley went at 178 and Graham Thorpe at 182, and Knight was left with Darren Gough and a target that had stopped being comfortable.

Knight made 96 from 117 balls. He was still there for the last over, and three were needed from the last ball of it. They ran two. Going for the third, Knight was run out by Andy Flower, and the card’s note on the day is one sentence: three runs were needed off the final ball, but only two were scored.

Full scorecard: Zimbabwe v England, 1st Test, Bulawayo, 18–22 December 1996 →

Why a draw and not a tie

Because England were not all out. Law 16 makes a tie a result reached when all innings have been completed and the scores are equal. England’s innings was not completed; it was stopped, at 204 for six, by the end of the overs. So the clause that applies is the one for everything the other clauses do not cover, and that clause says draw.

At Brisbane in 1960 Australia were all out with the scores level and the match was tied. At Bulawayo England had four wickets in hand with the scores level and the match was drawn. The Law distinguishes the two by whether the innings finished, and by nothing else.

The correction

The second note on the card is stranger than the first. After the match, the official scorers reversed the run-out on the final ball: Knight was recorded as the man dismissed, rather than Gough, because the batsmen had not crossed.

Which batter is out to a run-out depends on where the two of them were when the wicket was broken. On the field the dismissal went into the book against one man. On reflection, and after the match was over, it was moved to the other. The result did not change. The card did.

The last over

Heath Streak bowled it. His analysis for the innings reads eleven overs, no maidens, 64 runs, one wicket, two wides. The argument that attached itself to the over afterwards was about deliveries the umpires did not call wide, and a card cannot hold a delivery that was called nothing.

Ian Robinson and Steve Dunne were the umpires. Knight was named player of the match, for 56 and 96 and for being the man run out off the last ball of a chase he had nearly finished.

The other equality

Zimbabwe made 376 and 234. England made 406 and 204 for six. Both add to 610. The card carries two totals that are exactly equal, a target missed by one, a dismissal that changed hands after play, and a result line that reads Match drawn.

The series was two matches long and the card’s series line after this one reads level, nought all. It is the right description of a match that nobody won and nobody lost, and the wrong shape for one that was decided, or not decided, by a single run on the last ball.

What the card holds

A target of 205 and a score of 204. Three needed, two scored. A run-out that moved from one name to the other once the scorers had thought about it. And a form of words, drawn with the scores level, that the record had never needed before and had to find room for once it happened.

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No. 6 in The Rain Rule, a series of 9.

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