Day 4 at the Champions’ League saw two fairly one-sided games.

First up the very impressive NSW Blues took on a Sussex Sharks side that was missing Luke Wright (England duty?) and Michael Yardy (sick) and thrashed them. The Blues score of 130/2 looked a little below par, but from the minute Brett Lee dismissed stand-in Sussex captain Ed Joyce first ball the Blues bowlers were dominant. Like the Cobras, the Blues have topped their group with two wins.

Delhi faced possible elimination in their match against Wayamba, but their big guns came through when they were needed. 66 from Sehwag and 61 from Karthik saw them to an impressive 170 and despite a brave innings by Jayawardene the Sri Lankans were never up with the run rate. Wayamba now have to beat the impressive Bushrangers to stand any chance of progressing.

Tomorrow’s games see Somerset take on Trinidad & Tobago, and Bangalore playing an eliminator against Otago – losers go home.

Day three at the Twenty20 Champions’ League, and it was time for Somerset to take the stage. First, however, the Cape Town Cobras sealed a place in the next round with an emphatic 54 run win over the Otago Volts. Cobras captain, Andrew Puttick, became the first player to score a century in the tournament. They look to be a very good side.

In Somerset’s game against the Deccan Chargers Justin Langer won the toss and elected to bowl first. The Hyderabad faithful enjoyed the first few overs as Adam Gilchrist and VVS Laxman set about the Somerset bowling. However, wickets fell, and eventually the Chargers were restricted to 153.

Somerset were pretty much always up with the required run rate, but they too kept losing wickets. At 99-7 and with light rain falling they looked out of it, but James Hildreth and Alfonso Thomas put together a heroic partnership for the 8th wicket. When the final over came around, Somerset needed 5 runs to win off 6 balls.

Veteran New Zealander, Scott Styris, was chosen to bowl the final over, and with his first ball he clean bowled Hildreth. Young Max Waller came out to bat and obviously had no clue, but he had just enough talent to launch a skier off his second ball. It was a cricket equivalent of a sacrifice fly. Styris pouched the catch, but Thomas was now on strike. Five runs were still needed, Somerset had only one wicket left.

The next ball was a bad one, and Thomas dispatched it to the boundary for four. Scores level. And off the final ball of the game Thomas hit another four to grab the win for Somerset.

Boring game, this cricket, eh?

So, a good start for the Sabres, but the Indian teams are now 0-3 for the tournament. And they’ve lost two very close games. That won’t please the locals much.

Tomorrow Brett Lee’s NSW Blues take on the other English side, Sussex Sharks. There will be some Ashes-style rivalry in that. Also the Delhi Daredevils face a must-win game against the Wyamaba Elevens from Sri Lanka.

It was a triumphant day for the Australians today in the Twenty20 Champions’ League. First New South Wales Blues crushed the Bloemfontein Eagles by 53 runs, then Victoria’s Bushrangers beat the highly fancied Delhi Daredevils by 7 wickets. The Blues now have such a high net run rate that they are almost assured of a place in the next round. Victoria still have the dangerous Sri Lankans to face, but are looking good.

With both Bangalore and Delhi having lost their opening games, the India media will be desperate for a win out of the Deccan Chargers tomorrow. The Hyderabad side come up against the Somerset Sabres, whose Marcus Trescothick has just been named Player of the Year for the recent English season. The Chargers are the reigning IPL champions, but embarrassingly for India they are heavily dependent on their Australian stars, Adam Gilchrist and Andrew Symonds.

Wow, that was a magnificent opening to the Twenty20 Champions’ League. The first game was between the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Cape Town Cobras. Playing at home (the tournament is being staged in India), the Royal Challengers won the toss and batted. Thanks mainly to 51 from Robin Uthappa and 53* from Ross Taylor, they set a very competitive target of 180. (US readers please note that these games are limited to 120 pitches per side.)

The Cobras did not look a happy side. Their captain, Graeme Smith, was lost to an injury before the tournament even stared. Star fast bowler, Dale Steyn, was not available for this game either. After three very economical overs Charl Langeveldt injured himself diving for a catch and would probably not be able to bat. And their star batsman, Herschelle Gibbs, was out first ball. Bangalore should have won easily. But the Cobras didn’t give up, and thanks to a magnificent 99* from JP Duminy they reached the target with two balls to spare.

Full scorecard here.

To progress in the series the Royal Challengers now have to beat New Zealand’s Otago Volts, led by Brendan McCullum. They will be at home again, but the Chinnaswamy Stadium was also the site, in April 2008, of the first ever match in the Indian Premier League. In that game McCullum, playing for the Kolkata Knight Riders, scored 158 off just 73 balls. He’ll fancy his chances against the Royal Challengers again.

Meanwhile tomorrow sees both Australian sides in action. The New South Wales Blues take on the Eagles from Bloemfontein, while the Victoria Bush Rangers play the much fancied Delhi Daredevils.

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.

That’s the theory, but then theories are there to be tested, right?

In Canada right now they are playing the qualifying tournament for cricket’s Under 19 World Cup. Coming up to half way through the tournament, the USA team is on top of the table. They have beaten Ireland, Uganda and Vanuatu, and had a walkover against Sierra Leone. They do still have to play Canada, who beat them in the Americas regional qualifying tournament, and Papua New Guinea who have beaten Canada. There’s also the small matter of Monday’s game against Afghanistan which might have a bit of needle to it. However 6 of the 10 teams playing in Canada go forward to the main tournament in New Zealand next January, so the American kids look like they will be there.

A successful youth team is a good long term policy, but what I’m really looking forward to is American TV audiences discovering Twenty20.

I haven’t posted my Worldcon schedule yet because the timings of events are still somewhat up in the air and I may not be able to be on everything I was originally offered. However, one panel that was suggested that I would very much like to do was on the Future of Sport. If that does happen, I will make the case for Twenty20 cricket conquering the world.

You will be forgiven for scoffing at that. After all, the recent attempt to run a Twenty20 tournament in New York collapsed very quickly, at least in part because the foolish organizers wanted to hold it in October. But it was also because it was a pirate event, and as such it would have not attracted big name players. Today, however, the ICC has sanctioned plans for a Twenty20 tournament to be run by the USA Cricket Association, who we might expect to have a better idea of the weather required to play the game. They are talking about venues in Florida and California.

But wait, you say, Americans have no interest in cricket. This idea is doomed! I don’t think so. Test cricket certainly is a step too far for Americans right now, but Twenty20 is ideally suited to American sport-watching habits. It takes about the same time as a baseball game to play, it has scoring as frenetic as basketball, and it never ends in a draw. Also, being cricket, it is loaded down with statistics, which Americans love. And, as the IPL has proved, it is a tremendous spectacle. Something about the Twenty20 format conspires to produce lots of very close finishes.

What’s more here are a few choice quotes from the USACA’s proposal document:

The existing passion for cricket in the United States currently lies largely in ex-patriot communities from the Caribbean, Sub-Continent and other traditional cricket playing nations and regions.

Their hunger for cricket and willingness to watch cricket on Pay-Per-View television has made the USA the second highest pay television earner in the world, behind India.

The USA is also the world’s second biggest Internet cricket market. The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 attracted 1.15 billion hits within the USA, only fractionally behind India.

The USA is a very big and densely populated country, and even a small population of cricket watchers can easily produce the same amount of revenue as existing cricket-playing nations. Where there is money, the sport will follow.

The dust has now settled on the Twenty20 World Cup. I’ve been too busy to write much about it (save to laugh at the Australians), but some reflection is in order.

Firstly, England’s women’s team is awesome, particularly Claire Taylor who is one of the classiest batsmen it has been my pleasure to watch. Katherine Brunt’s demolition of New Zealand (3 for 6 in her four overs) meant that the final was not a great competition, but her rather piratical black eye helped assure viewers that this was no genteel pastime for cultured ladies, but rather a serious sporting event.

As for the men, I couldn’t be happier for Pakistan. Their country is going through an awful time right now and, as I’ve mentioned before, the country’s love of cricket is one of the things that helps unite it, especially in the face of terrorism. Here’s hoping this win does more good than simply put a trophy in a cabinet and make a few sportsmen richer.

The real winner, however, is Twenty20 cricket. Most of the games proved to be very entertaining, and ticket sales were apparently around 96%, so the tournament will have made good money. Significantly, quality bowling was what made the difference between success and failure. I didn’t bother listening to the BBC, but I’m sure Jonathan Agnew still has his head in the sand and is saying that bowlers are only in the game to make up the numbers, and that cricket as we know it is doomed. This tournament has made him sound even more stupid than usual, because clearly bowlers have been thinking very seriously about the game, and are fighting back well.

Not that the batsmen have been standing idle. Dilshan’s scoop shot is a wonder to behold. And this brings me to my point, which is that Twenty20 has brought with it a huge amount of innovation in playing styles and tactics.

When I was a kid, cricket was a very conservative game. The MCC published a coaching manual that explained exactly how the game should be played. In those days a player who was very successful at county level could be passed over for an England place because his batting style was deemed incorrect. You still hear people talking about playing “proper shots”, and it was only last year that Kevin Pietersen’s switch hit provoked howls of outrage from cricket journalists.

Now of course there’s a place for all that. There are good reasons why young players are taught to “play straight”. But just as Jenson Button’s driving style is nothing like the way you get taught to drive on public roads, so the way that a star batsman like Shahid Afridi plays is by no means straight out of the coaching manual. These days that’s OK as long as it helps his team win.

The world has changed. Cricket is no longer played in an Empire on which the sun never sets, in a world whose inhabitants expect it to be the same generation after generation. We now live in a world that is ruled by innovation, and Twenty20 cricket is a marvelous example of that.

A few days ago I was feeling very confident about the Royals chances of making it into the finals this year. Not any more. We have had two key games against the Chargers and Super Kings, and lost them both. What’s more, Warnie has picked up a hamstring injury and is doubtful for the next few games. There are just three left in the league stage. We need to win all of them to be sure of a place in the finals. Thankfully the main threat, the Kings XI Punjab, have a much tougher schedule than we do.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been rather too busy of late to bring you regular reports on this year’s Indian Premier League. We are now past the half way point in the league matches, and things are starting to settle down. Here’s a quick look at the state of play.

The current league leaders are Sehwag’s Delhi Daredevils, though it is actually the Sri Lankan, Dilshan, who has been performing best with the bat this year. Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings are also doing well, thanks to Matty Hayden being the top scoring batsman in the league at the moment. The most improved team are Adam Gilchrist’s Deccan Chargers, with Gilly himself leading the effort.

As for the Royals, they are clearly missing Shane Watson (on duty with Australia) and Sohail Tanvir (presumably due to the Pakistani government’s ban on their players taking part). They have lost three games, and had one washed out. More recently, however, they have turned things round. Superb batting by Yusuf Pathan saw the team to unexpected wins over the Daredevils and Chargers, and their most recent games, against the Kings XI Punjab and the Bangalore Royal Challengers, have been blowouts. Pathan was also the key player when a game went to the Twenty20 version of extra innings, a “super over” played against Kolkata when the teams ended their regulation innings on 150 runs each. I’m now starting to feel confident that they’ll make the semi-finals, and if they do that then a second title is by no means impossible.

With only weeks to go until the start of the tournament, the Indian Cricket Board has announced that this year’s Indian Premier League, the hottest event in world cricket, will have to be held in another country. Apparently there is a general election scheduled in India at the same time, and the government is so concerned about the danger of political violence that it doesn’t want to allow any event that could be a major security risk. Given what happened in Pakistan recently, their concern is understandable.

It is, however, a tragedy for India. Not only are the cricket fans in the teams’ home cities going to be denied the opportunity to attend games, but it will inevitably suggest to the rest of the world that India is an unsafe place to visit. What’s more, given the lack of time available, it isn’t at all clear that an alternative venue can be found in time. The tournament may not take place at all, which would probably prove a financial disaster for all involved. Jonathan Agnew is doubtless rubbing his hands with glee.

The good news is that the BCCI hasn’t given up. They are actively talking to cricket boards in other countries about hosting the event. South Africa is probably the front runner, but England is also a possibility. And that means that I might actually be able to go and see the Rajasthan Royals play live! Oh please, please let them be based in Taunton.

More information is available from the BBC and Cricinfo.