Six things the ICC World T20 is going to tell us
Have England finally got it right?
Let’s look at the stats: England have played 15 Twenty20 internationals. They’ve won six and lost nine. They’ve used 43 different players. (Forty-three!) Including eight wicket-keepers. At the first ICC World T20 in 2007, England beat Zimbabwe and lost to everyone else. Do the stats lie? Not really. Twenty20 is yet another game that England has given to the world before stepping aside and letting them give us a
good whacking. For a major team in any major sport to be sixth favourites – as England are – for a World Cup in their own country is pretty much unprecedented.
At least for this tournament England, belatedly, have the squad that the media and fans (and common sense) demanded. There’s four more new Twenty20 names in the squad for this tournament: Rob Key, James Foster, Graham Napier and Eoin Morgan, all of whom played at Twenty20 finals day last year. The crazy days of picking Alastair Cook and not Dimitri Mascarenhas have been quietly forgotten by the selectors.
There is an optimism about England’s latest fresh start but the thinking behind it is not so different to taking the T20 specialists Chris Schofield, James Kirtley and Darren Maddy to South Africa in 2007: there, England were not outclassed, but the new-look side lacked the experience as a team to deliver the killer punch when required.
Many players regard the secret of T20 as having a settled team, with each player familiar with his roles England, despite seeming to have settled, finally, on the 15 best individual players, don’t have that luxury. Then again if Graham Napier hits 152 off 58 balls in every game, maybe they won’t need it.
Has the IPL put India miles ahead of everyone else?
Kevin Pietersen thinks so. “India have taken the game to a new level,” he said in March. “Their scores in New Zealand were ridiculous. Compare that to how we played in New Zealand last year and they are on a different plane. We have got to do something.”
True enough: the theory is that the six-weeks-a-year of all-star T20 in the IPL has hot-housed India’s Twenty20 and one-day skills even since they took the inaugural title in 2007. India’s fielding, traditionally hopeless, has picked up; their bowling has more variety than ever, with at least four fast bowlers competing for spots alongside Harbhajan’s lethal mid-innings mystery spin. But it’s the batting that makes most opponents take a step back.
Racing to a 3-0 lead in the one-dayers in New Zealand, India scored at a phenomenal 7.58 runs an over, making their 5-0 hammering of England last November look like a gentle slap on the wrist. At Christchurch, they racked up 393/5 off 50 overs; at Hamilton, they knocked off 201 to win inside 24 overs.
The Hamilton win was fired by Virender Sehwag’s 125 off 74 balls. Was that innings more destructive than Yuvraj Singh’s 138 off 78 against England at Rajkot? Indian fans won’t care about the details: theirs is the team to beat in this tournament. Perhaps the most galling things for the opposition is that Tendulkar and Laxman, who would walk into anyone else’s side are again deemed surplus to requirements as MS Dhoni’s team defend their title.
Will it be as big a party as the first tournament in South Africa?
The 50-over ICC World Cup in the West Indies had gone on for seven weeks, with local supporters priced out of the stadiums and the cricket offering only sporadic peaks. Hopes of the first ICC World Twenty20 picking things up were not high: it had had a difficult birth; there was some dispute as to whether T20 should even be seen as an international format, particularly from India who had never held a domestic T20 tournament and initially declined the invitation to appear in the world event. When India did finally relent, they agreed to send what appeared to be a second-string team.
Then the tournament kicked off. And it was brilliant: a short, sharp two weeks, it passed in a blur of full-on cricket in front of near-capacity attendances thanks to an inspired £1-a-ticket, bring-your-own-picnic policy; Zimbabwe beat Australia and made us all laugh and India’s team of youngsters and unknowns absolutely stormed it.
The party atmosphere and the all-action cricket fed off each other and tournament director Steve Elworthy – the ex-South African fast bowler – was deemed to have saved the ICC from themselves. This was how an international tournament was meant to look and feel. The ECB snapped Elworthy up to repeat the trick in England. No pressure, then.
Why are Sri Lanka only fifth favourites?
Okay, they’re in the Group of Death: Group C – Australia, Sri Lanka and West Indies – the only one not to include a minnow. But surely Sri Lanka are the dark horses for this tournament? Lasith Malinga, fresh back from a long-term injury, was the top wicket taker at the halfway stage of the recent IPL, slinging down unplayable yorkers at 90-plus mph; and in Ajantha Mendis, the Sirils have world cricket’s next big star. Mendis’ weird, unplayable mix of medium pace off-spinners, leg spinners and his own ‘carom’ ball brought his 13 wickets at 11 runs each against India’s mighty batsmen last year and if Dhoni’s men eventually managed to half-work him out, the rest of the world has not yet had the chance.
The Sirils are still a mighty sharp fielding unit too and there are few stronger batting line-ups than the one led by Mahela Jayawardene, Sanath Jayasuriya and Kumar Sangakkara. Oh, and then they’ve got Murali, too.
Will it be a breakthrough for women’s cricket?
For the first time, a women’s World Cup is being played at the same time as the men’s. The first week of the women’s tournament will be played in Taunton, before the semi-finals and final are played as curtain-raisers to the men’s semi-finals and final, at Trent Bridge, The Oval and Lord’s.
While the England women’s World Cup triumph was well covered on TV in Australia – and shown on Sky in the UK – the attendance at the ground was just over 2000. Conversely, when England women played Australia as a curtain-raiser ahead of a 2008 CB Series game at the MCG, there were around 30,000 in the crowd. Months later, nine of the team were able to effectively turn professional, splitting their time between training and coaching on the Chance to shine scheme.
Showcasing the women’s game on the highest-profile stage of the men’s game in June is another giant step for the increasingly professional and ambitious women’s game.
Will the T20 sceptics come to the party?
The ECB’s bold new invention to revitalise cricket has taken off over the world. But Twenty20 is, even now, played against a certain background of scepticism from the self-appointed guardians of the game. (This while the MCC, the real guardians of the game, have got with the programme and are suggesting day-night floodlit Tests with pink balls).
The players get it and the kids get it: Twenty20 is a proper game that needs a lot of nerve, clever captaincy and a particular kind of skill. Maybe two-and-a-half weeks of watching Virender Sehwag trying to lamp Mitchell Johnson out of the park will finally persuade the sceptics to join the party.
Let’s concede one thing to the sceptics, though: the scheduling of this summer has been impossible. Then again: imagine the FA being told to stage the football World Cup during the domestic football season. There would be no clever answer. Well, that’s the task the ECB have had to take on. The West Indies series was a waste of time, but there’s simply too much event cricket to squeeze in this year: something has had to give and it would appear to be the Twenty20 Cup, the usual domestic centrepiece rushed through with little fanfare.
The imaginative, if not practical, solution might have been to axe the Pro40 a year earlier and play the domestic T20 in the second half of the summer. But then it would have clashed with the Ashes
For the anti-climactic feel of the early T20 Cup matches to be taken as evidence that the game is up for T20, rather than merely the one-off result of unfortunate fixture congestion, seems wishful thinking on the part of T20′s opponents.
