Run rate shapes as kingmaker with the World Cup hosts, along with New Zealand and England, expected to bank final-round winsAnd now, the end is near. And so we face the final curtain. A bit dramatic for the end of the group stages of a Twenty20 World Cup, but soon eight teams out of a dozen will be heading home or to their next assignments, thinking about what might have been and the disappointment of what wasn’t. And in Group 1, at least, the matter of which two teams get to stay a little longer will come down to pure and beautiful arithmetic. Arriving at this tournament, England and Australia would have been worldly enough to know that they couldn’t...
Key to victory against New Zealand were England’s seamers but Ben Stokes’s role in the team invites plenty of questionsThis was a very satisfying game of cricket, a mid-tournament group match in a rain-frazzled week that stayed alive for 39 of its 40 overs, played out in front of a semi-packed Gabba. In the broader sweep of things England’s 20-run defeat of New Zealand was another note in an excellent World Cup of deeper gears and genuine engagement.The lesson of these contests, which have felt jarringly real after the thin gruel of the year-round franchise circuit, is that the product works; that all the cricket is good, red or white ball, when it actually means something. Continue reading...
The reigning champions are not expected to stray too far from the template that delivered success last year For decade upon decade, Australian selectors have leant to the conventional. Three quicks and a spinner, your best bat is captain, wicketkeeper at seven in Test cricket or pushed up to throw the bat as an opener in the shorter forms. Occasionally circumstances or an unusual player might shift this around, but it tends to quickly revert to the mean. Having George Bailey in charge has led to an occasional willingness to be different. His days as a player and captain showed that, and those days are recent enough that he personally knows the strengths of most current players. It was Bailey’s...
The oil giant’s place in cricket’s landscape shows once more the Saudi regime’s art of blending into the sporting canvasThree years ago, Aramco, the oil giant predominantly owned by the Saudi royal family, underwent a subtle rebrand. And subtle is the operative word here: the company’s distinctive logo, a white star on a blue and green background, remained in place. But somehow the blue was rendered just a little bluer, the green just a little greener, the typeface softened into grey lowercase, the word “Saudi” and the Arabic script above it quietly removed.This was the logo upon which Sam Curran stood as he prepared to bowl for England against Pakistan in their final Twenty20 World Cup warm-up on Monday, a...
All-rounder has never truly shone in the shortest form but his personality and vibes could be crucial for such a tournamentShut your eyes and it’s not hard to picture the enduring images of Ben Stokes’s England career. In Test cricket he’s almost certainly leaning back, arms in the air at Headingley, roaring after he’s just cut away, cut away for four. In ODIs he’s probably decked out in baby/powder blue, arms aloft once again but this time with innocent eyes. Martin Guptill’s throw has deflected off Stokes’s bat for the six that no one saw coming. Not long afterwards, Stokes will have the World Cup trophy in his hands.In the shortest form, however, the image is a painful one. It’s...