It was the final day of the Twenty20 Qualifier Tournament today. Two matches were played. In the morning Ireland had a re-match with Namibia, and thrashed them by 9 wickets. That guaranteed them a place in the main event in September. In the afternoon they played Afghanistan for the tournament cup, and again they won. That puts them in Group B in the final tournament where they will play Australia and West Indies. Afghanistan, who were already qualified, will be in Group A with India and England.
Cricket
Cricket – Almost Done
Sadly the USA did not end the tournament on a high, getting comprehensively beaten by Hong Kong in the 11th place playoff. Scotland, however, went out with a bang, beating Canada for 5th with a four off the last ball (and they needed all four of those runs).
Ireland comfortably beat Netherlands, and now face a re-match with Namibia to see who will get that second berth in the senior tournament.
Cricket – Into The Playoffs
I’m pleased to report that the USA cricket team ended the tournament on a high, registering their third win as they beat Bermuda by 34 runs to secure 11th place overall.
Elsewhere Ireland crushed Canada by 10 wickets, but Scotland put up a tremendous fight against Netherlands. A couple of wickets in the 18th over put them in with a chance of an upset, but the Dutch tail managed to get them home.
Also today, Afghanistan played Nambia for the right to immediate entry into the main tournament. The Afghans won, so they will play in Sri Lanka in September. They also go directly to the tournament final. Ireland now play Netherlands. The winner of that will play Namibia. And the winner of that will book a trip to Sri Lanka and play off against Afghanistan for the tournament cup.
USA Beats Scotland at Cricket
Yes, you did read that right. The final round of the group stages of the World Twenty20 Qualifiers took place today, and USA registered their second win of the tournament (the other being against hapless minnows, Oman). Unfortunately that wasn’t enough to get them into the playoffs. It was, however, just enough to lift them above Uganda on net run rate, so they finished 6th in their group. On Thursday they will play Bermuda, who were 6th in the other group, for 11th place overall.
Scotland, meanwhile, should not be too disappointed. They managed to qualify for the playoffs, as did Canada. The two group winners were Afghanistan and Namibia, while Netherlands and Ireland took the runners-up spots. By next week we should know which two teams get to play with the big boys in Sri Lanka later this year.
T20 Qualifiers: Day 3
Meanwhile, back at the cricket…
Today’s top game was Italy v Ireland. The Irish just squeaked home with two balls and two wickets to spare.
Scotland registered their second win, against Uganda. Afghanistan thrashed Denmark while Canada dealt out a similar thumping to Hong Kong. The Americans fought bravely against highly fancied Namibia but lost by 17 runs.
Netherlands also had a tough game against Bermuda, but came through it OK. Kenya won the battle of the minnows against Oman, and Papua New Guinea got on the board at last by beating Nepal. Geraint had a good game, being second-top scorer and taking a stumping.
I’ll be on the road for the next three days and probably won’t be able to keep up with developments, so if you are interested you should check out CricInfo.
Cricket Report
The big game today was Netherlands v Afghanistan. It was a close-fought affair that ended with Afghanistan getting the winning runs with just 2 balls to spare, and 4 wickets in hand.
Ireland got their campaign back on track today with a 10-wicket thrashing of Kenya.
USA had a much better day, but fell just short of beating the very interesting Italian side.
Namibia continued their good run with a comfortable win over Scotland.
Geraint had a much better game today, but Papua New Guinea fell just short of beating Canada.
Nepal is emerging as a team to watch, with two good wins over Hong Kong and Denmark. Uganda are also unbeaten, having disposed of Oman today.
Cricket: it is a World Sport
For the next two weeks an international cricket tournament is taking place in the UAE. It is a qualifying event for the World Twenty20 tournament that will happen in Sri Lanka in September. All of the top cricketing nations: England, Australia, India, and so on, have been seeded into the main tournament. This event will give two lucky minnows a chance to try their luck against the big boys.
There are teams from all over. We have the USA and Canada, Ireland and Scotland, Italy and Denmark, Kenya and Uganda. Here are a few highlights.
The defending champions are Afghanistan who caused a huge surprise last time around. They kicked off with a comfortable win over Papua New Guinea.
The Netherlands are also hot favorites to get through, though they appear to be without their star, Ryan ten Doeschate, who is widely acknowledged as the best player from outside the main cricketing nations. He has a lucrative contract playing in South Africa and didn’t make himself available. The Dutch kicked off with a comfortable win over Canada.
Ireland are also hoping to do well after their upset win over England last year. Sadly they got off to a poor start, losing to Namibia by just 4 runs.
The dark horses of the tournament may be Italy. You don’t normally associate them with cricket, but their side includes Michael Di Venuto who was born in Tasmania and has for some years been a mainstay of the hugely successful Durham side. He has done very well for my fantasy cricket team too. Today the Italians thrashed Oman by 9 wickets.
The USA probably don’t stand much chance, and they have not done themselves any favors today by losing narrowly to Uganda. They might beat Oman though, and Kenya, also in their group, look vulnerable. USA-Scotland could be fun.
You may be wondering where the Welsh team is. Well, they are seeded, because the team that people usually call “England” represents the England & Wales Cricket Board. Welsh players are all qualified to play for “England”, and many have. One, Tony Lewis, captained the side. There is, however, one Welsh player in the tournament. Geraint Jones, who kept wicket for England for several years, was born in Papua New Guinea. He didn’t have a good game today, but I’ll be keeping an eye on him.
Sports Documentaries
Over the weekend I finished watching a few DVDs I need to send to Kevin. Two of those were sports documentaries: Ken Burns’ Tenth Inning and Stevan Riley’s Fire in Babylon. Both are notable for using sport a a lens with which to examine social history.
There’s an interview with Burns in the extras for Tenth Inning in which he says he sees Baseball as a kind of sequel to his famous series about the American Civil War. Both of them are projects that examine American history. Tenth Inning fits right into that theory. Although it is fairly recent history, the Dot Com Boom and 9/11 are well worth historical examination, and once again baseball proves a fascinating lens through which to do so.
Fire in Babylon takes us to another part of the American continent, and another sport. It celebrates the creation and 15-year domination of the great West Indies test side. The stars of the show include Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Michael Holding and Bunny Wailer. I loved it, especially the extra that is made from a series of interviews with Sir Geoffrey, Lord Gower and Imran Khan where they talk about having to face up to the West Indies pace attack. If any of my American friends want to know why I think baseball players are a bit wussy (though I now understand the game much better than I did when I wrote this) they should watch this documentary.
A brief warning for my West Indian friends. There’s one extra that is an interview with cricket historian David Frith. He’s so smarmy and vile that you may end up wanting to punch your TV. I know I did. Thankfully the main film makes it very clear how West Indies developed their pace attack as a response to the physical battering they took from Lillee and Thomson, and the racist abuse they got from the Australian crowds, in 1975, and this exposes Frith’s comments beautifully.
Respect
It has been a busy day here, full of minor annoyances, so I’ve not had time to write anything much. However, I would like to give a quick shout out to a couple of people who have done good things recently.
Firstly, Michael Clarke, captain of the Australian cricket team, who was well on his way to setting a new world record for runs scored in an individual innings of a test match, but chose to declare his team’s innings closed in order to make sure he had plenty of time to win the match. Good show, Puppy, even us Poms are impressed.
And secondly to Mr. Hornswoggler, a.k.a. Andrew Wheeler, for this rather fine review of Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief. From one reviewer to another, well done, sir.
An American At Lords
A couple of days ago I was pointed to this long essay by ESPN reporter, Wright Thompson. He’d been sent to cover the England-India test match at Lords last summer, and found the experience fascinating. There is much good in the article. Thompson is great at getting across how antiquated and stuffy Lords can be, and how ridiculous the MCC members look. He’s also spot on about the Tendulkar/Dravid phenomenon. He does get rather side-tracked at times, which is perhaps appropriate for anything that mentions Test Match Special and the inimitable Henry Blofeld. But the more I thought about what he wrote, the more I felt that he didn’t really understand test cricket, or baseball either.
Much of the article is, in fact, a standard piece of modern technophobia. Back in the 19th Century, journalists worked themselves into a frenzy over the possibility that people would die traveling in trains because our bodies simply weren’t designed to move that fast. Naturally they could find reputable doctors willing to attest that this was a very real danger. These days the favorite story is that the Internet and smart phones will make us dumb: if we use them too much we will never be able to concentrate on anything that lasts more than a few seconds again. As this manifestly isn’t true for most people, the current line is that it will only affect people who are born in the digital age. Naturally there are experts willing to swear that this is a very real danger. In a few years time no one will be able to read a novel, or watch a test match.
Well, I confess that I did spread my re-watch of The Lord of the Rings over three days because a whole twelve hour movie was a bit much, but I don’t think I’m a cabbage yet, despite my intensive use of Twitter. And I still follow test cricket, despite loving T20.
There’s a pervasive myth that baseball is a high-intensity, thrill-a-minute sport, whereas cricket is slower than watching paint dry. It doesn’t surprise me to hear British people trot this out, but I’m somewhat agog that an American who has watched both games could think this. As anyone who has seen more than a few games knows, much of the enjoyment of baseball comes from things not happening. Games in which one side doesn’t score any runs are common. Games in which one side is prevented from making any hits are celebrated. A game in which both pitchers got through nine innings without giving up a hit would probably be celebrated as the Best Game Ever, though this being baseball they’d play on until someone won, even if it took another three hours.
It is true that T20 was designed to last the same amount of time as a baseball game. But this wasn’t to replicate the energy of baseball, it was because it meant that you could stage the game in an evening, after work. The average baseball game sees 9 runs scored. The average T20 game sees around 300 runs scored. Which game sounds like it has more action?
The two sports have a number of similarities that become obvious if you watch Ken Burns’ fabulous documentaries (including the newly released 10th Inning). Both sports have a love of history. Both are absolutely obsessed with statistics, baseball probably more so because plays are called off the field rather than by the fielding captain so it is much easier to check stats before making a decision. And the frisson of horror that ran through baseball during the McGwire/Sosa home run fest was very similar to the panics that hard core cricket fans have over the six-hitting in T20, again possibly more so because of the open secret that performance-enhancing drugs were involved.
But what about this five-day thing. Americans would never watch a game that lasts that long, would they? Well, actually they do, it just doesn’t seem like it.
Almost all baseball games are played as part of a series. Mostly fans pay little attention to the outcome of series during the regular season because they are more focused on the overall record of their team, and its place in the standings. Once you get to the playoffs, however, it is the series, not the game, that matters.
A playoff series is played over several days, in both teams’ ballparks, with different starting pitchers each night. It is good to get the better of your opponents in an individual day’s play, but ultimately only the series result matters. The playoffs take place later in the year, at a time when the weather is most likely to affect games. Even the time of day matters, as anyone who has watched one of the idiotic 4:00pm start matches at Emperor Norton Field can attest. At that time of day the angle of the sun over the park, and the shadows it creates, makes batting almost impossible (which is reminiscent of the infamous “sun stops play” incident at Derby a few years ago). The World Series of Baseball is, in effect, a single game played over seven days (with breaks for travel).
Of course it doesn’t feel like that, because at the end of each day’s play one team or the other can say that it won. Also each day’s game (normally) only lasts about 3 hours, not 6 as in a day’s cricket. But the real attraction of both the World Series and test match is not what happens on an individual day, it is the developing story. It is the ebb and flow of fortunes, the changing conditions from day to day, the different individuals who come to the fore each day, the chance for redemption tomorrow if you mess up today.
Any writer will tell you that there is so much more that you can do in a novel than in a short story. The same is true of sport. Cricket has short forms, and baseball has regular season games, but for both sports the pinnacle of achievement comes in a contest that develops over several days. And in both cases the serious fans are glued to the developing story. I think that has always been the case, and always will be.
Hero
OK, enough of the cricket already. But I couldn’t resist posting this lovely picture of Tendulkar with the trophy.
The photo is © Associated Press and appears in this article on Cricinfo in which Tendulkar says he has no intention of retiring just yet. Hopefully that means that his much-anticipated 100th international century will be scored at Lords during the July 21-15 test match. (I understand that tickets are already sold out.)
Congratulations, India!
Just in case you hadn’t noticed, the cricket World Cup Final was played today in Mumbai. India beat Sri Lanka in a fairly close match that featured magnificent performances by players on both sides. I very much enjoyed it, and am delighted that the great Sachin Tendulkar has finally added a World Cup winner’s medal to his trophy cabinet.
Sporting Insanity
I have not been blogging about the cricket because I haven’t got a clue what to say. This England team has achieved the remarkable feat of being more unpredictable than the Pakistanis. They have also produced some heart-stoppingly exciting games.
I should apologize to all of my readers in the West Indies and Bangladesh. There is no way that England should have won today’s game, given how badly they played for much of it. In fact, aside from beating The Netherlands, I don’t think any of their results in this tournament went the way they should have done. I have no idea what is going to happen next. Bangaldesh to beat South Africa, I guess. Nothing else would be sufficiently bizarre.
Cultural Difference (Stereotyping)
The Adelaide Oval cricket ground has built some large new stands recently. When the test match took place there last year the English commentators on Sky and the BBC were in full flow whingeing about how the look of the ground had been ruined by hideous modern architecture. There’s a one-day international taking place there today, and Nasser Hussain just asked Greg Blewett whether there had been any complaints by the locals. “There were some complaints during the test match…” replied Blewie, “…because one of the new bars ran out of beer.”
The IPL Auction
I haven’t been saying much about cricket recently because the performance for the Australian side in The Ashes has been so awful it rather killed the series as a contest. However, today there’s something new to think about.
As I reported last year, in order to screw more money out of the franchises, the IPL has forced them to relinquish all of their players and bid to buy them back. The first round of the auction took place this morning. As I had expected, both the Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab are back in the tournament, which is good news for Shilpa and Preity.
A couple of teams: Chennai and Mumbai, made a determined effort to hang on to the core of their past teams. Chennai have re-signed MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Murali Vijay, Mike Hussey and Albie Morkel. Mumbai have resigned Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh, Kieron Pollard and Lasith Malinga. Delhi has retained Virender Sehwag but lost Gautam Gambhir to Kolkata for the top bid of the day, $2.4 million.
Despite having Shilpa on board, my boys are noted for being short on cash compared to some of the teams from bigger cities. However, I’m pleased to see that we kept our two Aussie stars: Warne and Watson. We lost Graeme Smith to new boys, Pune Warriors, but we picked up Rahul Dravid, Ross Taylor and Paul Collingwood. The Royals also paid big bucks for Johan Botha, a South African offspinner who also captains his country’s T20 side. A few eyebrows were raised at the amount of money we paid, but if Warnie says a spinner is worth having then he has to be good.
There’s more action to come, so it is a bit early to say which sides look the best, but I’ve been quite impressed with Kolkata’s batting line-up. With Gambhir being joined by Yusuf Pathan, Jacques Kallis, Brad Haddin and Eoin Morgan they should whack the ball around a bit, but they seem short on bowling. The new team from Kochi has picked up Muralitharan and has added Sreesanth, RP Singh and Ramesh Powar to back him up. They could be worth watching.
A Melbourne Mystery
The Ashes resumed today in one of the world’s great sporting events: the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Tens of thousands of holidaying Aussies had packed into the famous ground to see the old enemy ground into the dust. They were sadly disappointed, and no one seemed to know why.
England won the toss and elected to field, but although there was a certain amount of help for their bowlers there did not seen to be too many terrors in the pitch. After a few minutes of play, Sir Geoffrey Boycott, commenting for the BBC, said he could see no way that England were going to win. The pitch was too friendly. The game, he confidently predicted, would be a draw.
Four hours later, Australia were all out for 98, a performance that racked up so many “lowest” and “worst” records that I have lost track of them all.
Cricket pitches do get a bit better during the day, but not by orders of magnitude. The fact that England’s openers cruised to 157 without getting out in the evening session suggested that Sir Geoffrey’s assessment of the wicket was correct. So what happened?
“Australia are batting without any care and attention,” Lord Gower noted on Sky. And he should know, as batting without a care in the world was something he was rather good at during his career. Such behavior, however, is not normally expected of the fiercely competitive Australians. Had they partaken of too much Christmas cheer, or was some other factor to blame?
“It was as if their brains had gone out of the window,” commented a bemused Sir Geoffrey at the end of the day. Missing brains? Well, that could explain a lot. And I happen to know that this person is a keen cricket fan.
How Not To Run A League
The Indian Premier League has been one of the biggest sporting success stories of recent years. International stars from all over the world have come to play for Indian club sides. The matches have frequently been nail-biters, and league championships hard fought. The league even survived having to play in South Africa one year due to security concerns in India. Now, however, the whole edifice threatens to fall apart thanks to a degree of high-handed autocracy of a type we are used to seeing from the Pakistan Cricket Board.
The IPL does have some fairly high profile concerns about the legitimacy of business operations. Lalit Modi, the marketing genius who spearheaded the league for its first three years, is now under investigation by Interpol for alleged money laundering. It is not entirely clear, however, whether Modi has really done anything particularly wrong, or whether he is being singled out for special attention because he has offended important people in the Indian government.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has taken firm control of the IPL with a view to cleaning it up. But in doing so they seem to have lost sight of what a sporting league is all about: teams and players. A successful sporting business has many elements. Quality players, exciting games, TV revenue, quality marketing: these are all important components. But the key components that sporting leagues need to have are teams: groups of players who acquire reputations and supporters. If teams are not allowed to establish themselves, they don’t grow their support bases, and they have difficulty making money.
You see this sort of thing occasionally in the USA, for example when franchises move from one city to another. Loyal San José Earthquakes fans, for example, were furious when Major League Soccer took away our hugely successful team and forced them to play in Houston instead. Finding enthusiasm for the replacement Earthquakes team, with a very different squad of players, that we were given a few years later was difficult.
The BCCI has lost sight of the importance of teams in a number of ways. For example, this year they have required the teams to relinquish most of their players and rebuild their squads almost from scratch in a new auction. A certain amount of control over team composition is useful, otherwise you get a few rich teams dominating the league, as happens in European soccer. The draft systems used in US sports, and transfer regulations, are methods that sporting authorities use to counteract this.
Destroying every team in the league, however, is a very different matter. It was very obvious at the end of this year’s Champions’ League that the players of the victorious Chennai Super Kings were upset that they would never get to play together again. Supporters of all IPL clubs have little idea who will be playing for their teams next year. The BCCI, it seems, does not care as long as it can make lots of money out of a big player auction.
Today the BCCI dropped a bombshell. Citing financial and contract irregularities, they have wound up two of the IPL franchises, including the Rajasthan Royals, who won the inaugural league back in 2008. The owners of the affected teams have expressed shock and surprise, and owners of other teams are clearly worried.
It may well be that some of the charges laid against the Rajasthan and Punjab franchises are indeed justified. Given the allegations being thrown around, it would not surprise me if other teams had also done things for which punishments might be handed out. But you can deal with such things using fines and handicapping of teams. The severity of the BCCI’s action suggests that they have no concern for the many cricket fans who follow the league, and raises suspicions that they have ulterior motives.
You see, the BCCI has recently allowed two new teams into the IPL. The suspicion has to be that the BCCI, having pocketed fat buy-in fees from the new teams, and faced with the need to organize a new season with the expanded league, decided to find an excuse to kick out two of the existing teams. It has not escaped my notice that the two teams that have been chosen as scapegoats are both owned by high-profile Bollywood actresses: Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty.
If experience with the PCB is anything to go by, what will happen now is that legal threats will be liberally bandied around, “negotiations” will take place, and suddenly the two miscreant teams will be forgiven and allowed back into the competition. This will do nothing to allay fears of corruption in the IPL. It will do quite the opposite.
England: World Champions
I’m not entirely sure that I believe this, but it does appear to be true.
Possibly no one else believed it either, which would explain why South Africa were utterly humiliated and Australia well beaten by an England side that no one gave much of a chance going in to the tournament. They were 12/1 going into the event, with only Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan offering better odds. They were beaten by West Indies in their first game, and would have gone out of the tournament had rain not saved them against Ireland. From then all, the game looked very easy indeed. No, I can’t explain it. Like I said, I still don’t quite believe it.
Busy Weekend
Tomorrow I am off to Oxford for a party. I’ll be back home on Saturday. I could spend a lot of the weekend doing stuff. There’s the Bath Coffee Festival and the Love Food Festival in Bristol to think about. Probably, however, I will go home and collapse on Saturday. And on Sunday I’ll start getting the cottage organized and cheer on England in the Twenty20 World Cup Final.
Yes, you did read that correctly. The England cricket team are in the final of an international event. They will either play Australia or the current cup holders, Pakistan, who play their semi-final tomorrow. The fast Barbados pitch will favor the Australian bowlers, so odds on an apocalypse on Monday are not as good as you might think.
IPL Catchup
Having been distracted by Life, I’ve been a bit too busy to blog about the IPL much. Last time I did so, I was feeling pretty confident about the Royals’ chances. Unfortunately the team went into a short slump soon after. They fought back with superb wins over the Chargers and Kings XI, and then got crushed by both Mumbai and Bangalore. Admittedly they are the two best teams of the year, and from an England point of view it was good to see Kevin Pietersen back on form, but it was disappointing to see the Royals lose so badly.
With only 5 games left to play the league is still very much in the balance. Only Mumbai are certain of a place in the playoffs. Only Punjab cannot get there. Fourth place will almost certainly be decided on net run rate, and as ours is rather poor I don’t think we’ll make it.
Then again, this is Twenty20, you never know…