TootingTrumpet with the latest Strauss Tapes:
“Anyway, the other reason I’m calling is to ask you for Sarah Taylor’s phone number. No, not like that, I’m a married man… it’s for Matt. No! He’s a married man too! Andy reckons Matt could learn a few things from her. Just minor technical wicket-keeping things. He mentioned standing up and standing back, moving the feet, head and hands, catching, leading the fielding effort, concentration, stumpings… maybe one or two others, I’m not sure. Thanks”
In these fast times, last week’s news seems like last century. Still the Old Batsman’s take on the World T20 was pretty funny:
Best attempt at a not-outer [sponsored by Red Ink inc]: Jacques Kallis, SA vs Pakistan
The Best Australian Bowler Allan Border Medal Award: Dirk Nannes [Netherlands]
Best player of fast bowling: Suresh Raina, India vs England
Services To UK Tourism: Ricky Ponting – ‘We’ve got two weeks in Leicester’.
Third Umpire, The Old Batsman and England Cricket have ranked the performance of the English team in the World Twenty20. Here is a snapshot:
Player TU TOB EC Kevin Pietersen 8.0 11.0 8.0 Ravi Bopara 7.5 8.0 7.0 Stuart Broad 7.0 8.0 8.0 Grame Swann 7.0 7.0 7.0 James Foster 6.5 1.0 7.0 Dimitri Mascarenhas 6.5 6.0 6.0 Adil Rashid 6.0 6.0 7.0 Ryan Sidebottom 6.0 6.0 6.0 Owais Shah 5.0 4.0 6.0 Luke Wright 5.5 5.0 6.0 James Anderson 5.5 6.0 6.0 Paul Collingwood 5.0 2.0 6.0 Rob Key 3.0 Eoin Morgan 3.0 Graham Napier Did not play
The Old Batsman gives Kevin Pietersen a 11/10 which seems fair considering that England loses whenever Pietersen doesn’t turn in a great performance. James Foster’s 1/10 is surprising (typo?) considering his stumping of Yuvraj probably turned the game. Nobody likes Collingwood. Rob Key, Eoin Morgan and Graham Napier should get more chances before we can rate them.
How he made his runs. First, ball by ball:
The cumulative progression:
And the percentage of dot balls, singles, twos and boundaries
Absolute brilliance! For a team that started their tournament disastrously with losses in the warmups against South Africa and India and then a first group loss to no-hopers England, this is an amazing turnaround. Today, they turned in a powerhouse performance against the favorites Sri Lankans.
The key for Pakistan was to get the Sri Lankan top order out quickly. They got the openers with the in-form Dilshan falling to his favorite shot for a duck. Then Jayawardene fell too, but Sangakkara slipped through. With Mathews giving him great support at the end, Sri Lanka posted a score which gave their bowlers something to defend. For most teams, 138 would have been a miserable score, but the Sri Lankan bowling is so rich in talent that you wondered if Pakistan let the match slip away from them in the final few overs. Perhaps someone else should have bowled the final over.
But all that seemed irrelevant as Pakistan went out to bat with a plan and executed it to perfection. They did not lose any wickets during the Powerplay, but maintained a steady runrate. No double wicket overs. After the openers left, Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Malik played one of the most responsible innings I have ever seen with Malik ensuring that Afridi kept his cool. As the Lankans slowly gave up hope, Afridi launched a few boundary hits to seal the deal. The perfect innings at the perfect time! While Afridi will keep the honors, let me say that Malik deserves almost as much credit for staying with Afridi and helping him put it together.
Tough luck for Sri Lanka, but Pakistan deserved to win today and Sri Lanka didn’t. Sri Lanka had a case of India-tactics-itis, where they tried to upset Pakistan with silly tactics (unnecessary batting promotions, heavy rotations of bowlers) that backfired on them. Sri Lanka did not believe that they could win and Pakistan, for all their unpredictably, had the confidence, playing straightforward cricket, taking no risks and trumping Sri Lanka.
This victory means so much for Pakistan. Unable to play any Test cricket in 2008, losing team members to ICL, getting tours cancelled, having the visiting Sri Lankan team being attacked by terrorist and starting off with poor performances in the Cup, they managed to turn it all around. The captain Younis Khan and the management deserves a lot of credit to keep the team spirits up and get everyone performing.
But, of course, Younis will be eating a few words tonight. Yes, those very words he said when they lost to England in the first match:
It won’t be a disaster even if we exit before the Super Eights It would be sad if we don’t make it, but I have never attached too much importance to Twenty20 cricket, as it is fun cricket. I mean it is more for entertainment, even if it is international cricket. It is all for the crowd. Twenty20 is all about fun. Everybody expects players to come out and entertain.
What an absolute stunner by Q. He wrote an open letter to Dilshan not to try his favorite scoop shot pointing to the example of Misbah. Q begged Dilshan not to try the shot.
Dilshan didn’t get the memo. He tried it and went for a duck.
Great call, Q!
Before the IPL started, John Buchanan expoused the idea of “multiple captains”. It seemed stupid and so it proved after Kolkata Knight Riders ended up at the bottom of the IPL table. While Buchanan was criticized by many, Kumar Sangakkara thought it was an interesting idea. Later, when Sangakkara’s team Kings XI Punjab won a few matches, it was revealed that they were implementing Buchanan’s idea. Of course, after Punjab lost more and crashed out, there was no more mention of that tactic.
In this year’s World Twenty20, India experimented with a “flexible” batting lineup that was an unmitigated disaster. Dhoni failed at No. 3. When he left the spot, Raina failed. Then India experimented with Jadeja at No. 4 in a crunch match which failed spectacularly as India lost by just 3 runs. One would think that other teams would learn from India’s misery.
Not so the Sri Lankans. Today, they had two stupid moves. First, they sent Jehan Mubarak when Dilshan was out in the first over. Mubarak lasted just two balls, making zero. Then after the 5th wicket fell, they sent Udana ahead of Mathews. Udana wasted 5 balls, making 1 run and getting out. Probably they could have ended up with 150+ if it weren’t for these two mistakes.
Imran Yusuf on Dawn [Hattip: Q]
To the grand-father who keeps saying ‘Test cricket is the only cricket I’m interested in’: Nobody believes you anymore, you’ve watched every game in the tournament and every time you watch a Test match you fall asleep within 10 minutes. Also, don’t think we haven’t noticed you following the Women’s T20 World Cup…
Read the whole thing.
Take the poll below [The Poll is Now Closed]:
This is who:
Amy:
A bunch of the most hilarious, stupidly, chokingly hysterical chokers.
Plenty has changed in the world in the last decade. [...] And then we have South Africa, choking like they always do in the knockout stages of a world tournament, to assure us that all is in order in this world.
South Africa reached the semi finals on account of their experience at IPL, and then lost it, on account of the same! A case in point being Duminy’s experience with MI! But more importantly they choked again! How I wish I had betted on it!
JC:
So according to the South African world view, everyone is a choker except the ultimate winner of the tournament. We live in a world full of chokers. Chokers to the left of me, chokers to the right.
But on the other hand, the rest of the world didn’t enter this tournament as raging favourites, playing unbeaten until crunch time in the semi-finals. Nope, Graeme Smith can spin it anyway he likes it. But the C-word is imprinted on his and his teammates’ foreheads more firmly than ever.
South Africa choking in a semi final is almost as good as Australia getting knocked out of the tournament early on. Not as good, obviously. I didn’t think they would blow it this time, I thought they had a good enough team and enough form to carry them through. Happily I was wrong and we saw the choke-meister generals do it one more time.
The Evil Robotic white ball players looked indestructible, but none of us really believed it, did we?Why?Because they choke.They always choke.Every world cup/thingy they choke.
South Africa have choked again, Kallis played too slow and South Africa’s power hitters didn’t get enough balls to finish the job.
And a lot more. But the Proteas have their supporters too: Straight Points and King Cricket believe it was just better cricket by the Pakistan team.