Tomorrow the first ever major international club tournament for cricket opens in India. We are used to seeing international club competition in sports like soccer and rugby, but for cricket this is brand new, and it will therefore be watched very closely.
For the benefit of those of you not familiar with cricket, the tournament will use the Twenty20 format, so the games will be about 3 hours long and there won’t be any draws (though ties are possible). The teams come from India, England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, West Indies and Sri Lanka. I believe that the Pakistani government is still sulking, so we won’t see any of their World Cup winning squad in the tournament, even as guest players in teams from other countries.
The format is four leagues of three, followed two two leagues of four (with, I believe, points carried forward) and then semi-finals and a final.
The English representatives are the Sussex Sharks, and my local boys, the Somerset Sabres. Somerset should get through the first stage — though the match-up with The Deccan Chargers (Hyderabad), led by Adam Gilchrist, on Saturday will be challenging (see you on Twitter, Jonathan). After that they’ll probably have to play the Sharks, whom they have had great battles with all season, and the New South Wales (Sydney) side.
In the other half of the draw we have the other Australian side, Victoria (Melbourne), whose fortunes I will be following closely. They are very good at the Twenty20 game, but they have a very tough draw against the Delhi Daredevils — easily the most exciting batting lineup in the competition — and the Sri Lankan team, Wayamba. The Sri Lankan line-up includes the young spinner, Ajantha Mendis, whom most top batsmen still can’t read effectively. Also in that half of the draw are top sides from Bangalore, Cape Town and Otago.
It promises to be a very exciting tournament, and the forecast for India for the next few weeks is mostly fine. If you’d like to read more about the sides involved, CricInfo has a good introduction.
Update: Reading back over this today I noticed that I has left West Indies off the list of countries represented. I’ve corrected that now. Very sorry.
What’s the difference between a draw and a tie?
Karen:
Most forms of cricket are limited either to a certain number of balls (pitches) or by time. In the longer forms of the game to win it is necessary, not only to score more runs than your opponents, but to get the opposition out as well.
Suppose a baseball game was limited by pitches. Your team is up 5-1, so it looks good for the win, but under cricket-like rules you’d also have to get 27 outs (nine innings, 3 outs in each) before your pitch count ran out to be declared the winner. That’s not really necessary in baseball, because you can score 4 runs with a single hit, and games are often potentially in doubt down to the last pitch. But in cricket the most you can score off a single pitch (barring penalties) is 6, and if you are 100 runs down you need an incentive to keep the game interesting. Holding out for a draw provides that.
A tie is where both sides finish the game on the same number of runs (and sometimes with the same number of outs, though that tie-breaker is not always used).
There are no extra innings in cricket.