In the end, players who have previously been marginalised, sidelined and discarded came good at just the right timeAfter days of dire forecasts, it was unexpected to even have a T20 World Cup final. Angry cartoon thunderstorms failed to deliver on a night that felt warm and humid enough to bring them on. India supporters had expected to see their team but their semi-final knockout didn’t have the expected hit on crowds, with more than 80,000 still in attendance at Melbourne’s giant arena. As Pakistan fans filed out, post-match presentations offered a manufactured euphoria of ascending Coldplay choruses while gold glitter covered the grass, shimmering like a fleeting nightclub dream. The real euphoria was among the England squad, whose podium...
Indian cricket shapes the world game yet they have now gone 11 years without a trophy as big game misjudgments continue to cost themIndian cricket should be dominating world cricket. By bank balance it already is: the last Indian Premier League deal went for more than US$6bn (£5.1bn), the season will soon expand to 94 matches, its timeframe will eat up more of the southern season, pushing earlier into March and perhaps even February. Its franchises have already taken January by buying up new leagues in South Africa and the United Arab Emirates, the same organisations are eyeing up the Hundred in England and the Big Bash in Australia should private investment be invited, and as salary caps increase they...
Coach’s law of nature speech highlights take-as-it-comes approach which has helped propel unlikely run to final“The mistake they make,” Harold Pinter said, “is to attempt to determine and calculate, with the finest instruments, the source of the wound”. He wasn’t talking about cricket (that time) but the words still come to mind watching Pakistan play in this T20 World Cup.Six weeks or so ago, they hammered England by 10 wickets in a Twenty20 match in Karachi. The mood in the stadium after the game that evening was giddy, even a little delirious. A day later, England beat them back, badly, in a 63-run victory that was settled 20 minutes into the second innings and of course the mood changed too....
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...