New Zealand vs Pakistan, 1st Semi-Final at Manchester, Jun 16 1999 - Ball by Ball Commentary

and as expected Pakistan qualify for the 1999 World Cup final, a commanding performance. New Zealand get to hang around for the encore 4-Test match series

a huge crowd has gathered in front of the pavilion. Stay tuned and we'll have a summary of the presentations being fully drowned out by the crowd noise

Ravi Shastri is the MC, and don't the crowd just love him

Fleming gets a healthy boo as well. "we had a reasonable competitive total... Shoaib very quick... we thought we may have got them with the lack of pace (!).... we exceeded expectation for a lot of people [in terms of the tournament, not the match]"

Wasim: "reaching the final of the world cup is a great achievemnt...", he doesn't care who he plays in the final

Richie Benaud chooses Shoaib as the Man of the Match, not for his economy I assume. A pretty surprising choice over Saeed Anwar.

and then there were 3. Tomorrow is the second semi final, Australia v South Africa from Birmingham. As usual, 0945 GMT. Good night.

people running onto the pitch for some unknown reason

fans jumping over the fence, and squatting on the rope, security doesn't appear to give two hoots about it

a big delay it will be, my crowd's overfloweth!

I suspect there might be a pitch invasion at the conclusion of this match. Just call it a hunch.

game won't be restarting until all the crowd are packed back into their tin

this is fun

finally, play is about to continue after a 9 minute delay. Most of the crowd simply stared blankly and ignore the request to get back into the stands