Close call for England Under-19s

Two days ago, this Googly correspondent was singing the praises of young Billy Godleman after his match-winning performance against Sri Lanka in England Under-19s warm-up match for the pre-World Cup Triangular competition. I was fairly sure that Billy would be the stand-out player when the tournament proper got underway, but not to be today.

England's juniors scraped a win over Pakistan (who yesterday beat Sri Lanka fairly comprehensively by 83 runs) by a narrow margin of just 16 runs.

And the bulk of these came courtesy of the bat of Sussex's 19-year-old Ben Brown. Ben is mostly categorised as a wicketkeeper and has only one First-class match to his name: last summer when he scored 46 against Sri Lanka A. Today he came to the rescue as the top order failed to fire and only Dan Redfern and Chris Woakes made double figures. Ben hit a stonking 93 not out off 105 balls, with nine fours and a six.

Far too early in his career to claim him as the next keeper/batsman, but not a bad start. England's total was 213 and after Pakistan's performance yesterday, one might have given them the edge but Tom Westley's (pictured) removal of top order bat Umair Mir was vital and 17-year-old Liam Dawson's three for 47 along with James Harris's removals of opener Ahmed Shehzad and tail-ender Adil Raza secured the victory for England.

[Image: Getty] [mimitig]