A team based upon their powerful Test bowling lineup had enough power to carry them to victory over their determined New Zealand opponentsAustralia’s relationship with Twenty20 international cricket has always been strained. When Ricky Ponting captained the first ever match in 2005, with players in fancy dress wearing contrived nicknames on their shirts, even smoking an unbeaten 98 couldn’t stop him looking like an unimpressed cat unable to bring up a hairball.Influential people shared his disdain, but even after taking the format seriously, and developing one of the better domestic leagues, Australian teams in T20 World Cups fell flat. It was easy to dismiss the importance of the condensed form, but for a dominant Test power that also collected 50-over...
The man who legitimised T20 in his homeland has had a lean spell but has sprung to life in time for the World Cup knockoutsAs Australia qualified for the Twenty20 World Cup semi-finals by chasing 158 against West Indies, the most important piece dropped into place with a click. David Warner is Australia’s defining T20 player, ever since rising to prominence with a pyrotechnic national debut back in 2009. His current captain, Aaron Finch, may edge him on career runs after 13 matches in the past year that Warner missed, but Warner has still played the most T20s for Australia. He more than anyone legitimised the format in Australia by crossing from it to become a Test success. All the...
Top two teams in Group 1 at World Cup have been narrowed decisively to the top one – and it most certainly isn’t AustraliaIf you wish for something hard enough, according to some self-help books based upon little more than the songwriting of Pinocchio, it just might come true. So went the script in the T20 World Cup, but the wrong way for Australia: a team relying on a Test configuration that was undone at the start by England’s Test‑style bowling.When facing them there is a range of T20 options to consider. The ripping leg spin of Adil Rashid, who opened proceedings in Dubai and bowled three dot balls in a first over that went for six runs. The left-arm...
Bowler makes light of his lack of international experience with productive spell towards the end of Bangladesh inningsIt is easy to forget in the middle of all that sound and light, the frivolity in the stands – not to mention, in Abu Dhabi, a PA system overseen by the holder of the World’s Most Excited Man title – that T20 is a brutal business.Cricket has always been a cruel sport. In the shortest form that cruelty becomes a relentless thing, meted out in the brightest of lights. Plenty of cricketers around the world have been a little chewed up by this during the past 18 months on the franchise treadmill. Bowlers, in particular, need the skin of a rhino, the...
As he fades with the bat, it is easy to forget what a revolutionary England’s captain has been as both player and leaderOne of Napoleon’s favourite generals, the glamorous, reckless Joachim Murat, was famous for riding into battle ahead of his cavalry regiment carrying nothing but a small whip. For all the bloodshed around him Murat maintained he never personally injured a single enemy soldier, although presumably that whip could be a bit annoying. In an unfortunate twist he ended up being sentenced to death for treason, his final request a hot bath filled with eau de cologne and a firing squad made up of his own captured men.It is always hard to resist the urge to pack sport and...