The final day of the group stages in Dubai turned out pretty much as I expected (sorry America). Here are the results:
Afghanistan beat USA by 29 runs
UAE beat Canada by 42 runs
Netherlands beat Kenya by 7 wickets
Ireland beat Scotland by 37 runs
So the four teams through to the final stages of the competition are: Afghanistan, Ireland, Netherlands and UAE. As points against fellow qualifiers are carried forward, Afghanistan and UAE will be the favorites to go through to the main tournament. Irish readers, your boys need to keep winning.
There is no fairy tale for the USA team, though they should be proud of their one win. It proves that they are now a force to be reckoned with. Canada and Scotland, I’m afraid your teams were rather uninspired.
There is, however, some good news for American cricket fans. Pakistan is currently unable to play home games because they cannot guarantee the safety of visiting teams (some of you may recall the horrific attack on the Sri Lankan team last year). They have been playing games in Dubai, but today it was reported that the Pakistan Cricket Board is in negotiations to play some games in the USA. Who they would play against is currently uncertain, but the games will almost certainly be in the Twenty20 format. This comes hard on the heels of news that Lalit Modi has been negotiating arrangements to stage some demonstration matches featuring IPL teams in the USA. We could be in for some exciting times.
If you happen to be reading this, Mr. Modi, please note that there are large numbers of cricket fans in the San Francisco Bay Area.
UAE have become the first team to qualify for the final stages. They will be joined by the winner of tomorrow’s match between Netherlands and Kenya.
The other group is potentially more interesting. Probably Ireland and Afghanistan will win their games tomorrow and go through, but if the USA can beat Afghanistan it will all come down to net run rate. Unfortunately, because of the thrashing they took at the hands of the Irish, the Americans need to win by a big margin.
I don’t normally pay much attention to the Winter Olympics, but I have been pointed at an interesting story about the ski jump event (thanks Daniel). This year’s event will doubtless be very competitive, but the record holder on the Whistler Park hill, where the competition takes place, will not be there. She is barred from competing because of her gender.
Ski jumping, it turns out, is one of those sports where the physical advantages of men don’t mean much. Weight apparently has an effect on your speed down the hill, but they can handicap contestants by changing the starting point. The IOC says that it can’t have a women’s event in the Olympics because there are not enough good women ski jumpers to make a reasonable contest. Nevertheless 2009 saw the first women’s world championships, which Van won. She took her case for an Olympic place to court in Canada, but lost.
It seems to me that this is an excellent opportunity to test out Kristin Worley’s ideas for gender-neutral competition. You could put men and women ski jumpers in the same competition and just handicap them by weight. But the IOC is having none of it. Their devotion to gender-separated sport is absolute. After all, what would happen if you let women into men’s sports and a woman won?
Out in Dubai teams from eight countries are vying for the honor of going to the world Twenty20 cricket tournament in the West Indies later this year. The eight test-playing nations qualify for the finals by right, but Twenty20 is a version of the game where luck can play a big part and so less-skilled teams can make an impact, and of course there’s a share of the television revenues of the main tournament at stake. The two teams that come through the Dubai tournament will have won a place on the world stage.
The teams are divided into two groups:
Group A: Afghanistan, Ireland, Scotland, USA
Group B: Canada, Netherlands, Kenya, UAE
Two teams from each group will qualify for the final stages, and two teams from that will go forward to the main event.
Today’s results are as follows:
Afghanistan beat Ireland by 13 runs
Netherlands beat Canada by 6 wickets
UAE beat Kenya by 15 runs
USA beat Scotland by 6 wickets
If I’d been asked to pick the two qualifiers before the tournament I would have gone for Ireland and the Netherlands. The Afghans have done very well. But there are jaws on the floor all around the cricket world over the USA’s thrashing of Scotland. The Americans have already beaten UAE in a warm-up match, and they’ll always fancy their chances against Canada, so they might be starting to think of going all the way. First, however, they have to get through tomorrow’s game against a very embarrassed Ireland side, and then on Thursday they play Afghanistan in a match that has huge significance in Kabul, if not in Washington.
Cricinfo has news of an interesting development in the world of cricket. A group of teams from India, the UK, South Africa, the West Indies and (hopefully) Australia is planning to form a global alliance and a single brand for Twenty20 cricket. I can see the economic benefits of this, but while I’m all for cricket looking for ways to boost audiences, I can see this one running onto a few rocks.
Firstly some supporters are going to get very confused. As a Rajasthan Royals fan I should presumably sign up to the global group. But their UK team is Hampshire, not Somerset. I can just about manage that, having spent five years in Southampton, but what if they pick NSW for their Australian side?
Then there’s the team names. The Cricinfo story says that the teams in the alliance will play under the Royals brand in all Twenty20 competitions, but there’s already a team called the Royals in the UK, and it isn’t Hampshire. Worcestershire are not going to be happy. And I suspect that a bunch of proud Cape Town fans will want to keep the Cobras name.
Finally this rather blows a hole in the idea of the Twenty20 Champions’ League, which is supposed to showcase the best teams from each country. There was quite enough fuss in UEFA over Roman Abramovitch having an interest in both Chelsea and CSKA Moscow. At least three of the proposed Royals teams were in last year’s Champions’ Trophy (probably four when they announce the Australian side). It would make a nonsense of the competition if those teams were all under the same ownership.
For the benefit of those of you not familiar with NFL history, the New Orleans Saints have a long tradition of under-achievement. So much so that their fans started referring to them as the “Ain’ts” and coming to games with paper bags over their heads. Last night that tradition was gloriously laid to rest.
It was, in many ways, a fairytale ending. And that’s not just the heartwarming story of a city trashed by a hurricane and left to rot by Washington working its way back to self-confidence on the back of a successful sports team. Stories and story-makers about in New Orleans.
There was the trans-Atlantic connection for a start. The Saints’ head coach, Sean Payton, spent some happy early years in England as quarterback of the Leicester Panthers. Playing at tight end on the same team was a lad called Martin Johnson who is the former captain and now head coach of the England rugby squad.
Then there’s the literary connection. On my twitter feed Neil Gaiman and Peter Straub were cheering on the Saints in support of their friend and fanatical Saints fan, Poppy Z. Brite. I understand that Harlan Ellison was supporting the Saints too.
I don’t have any Hollywood people on my Twitter feed, but I’m sure that Brad Pitt was cheering for the Saints and the city he adopted following Hurricane Katrina.
New Orleans is a city where everyone loves to go to party. It has hosted several superbowls for that very reason. Now at last it has a chance to party in its own right. As Bill McLaren might have said, there will have been dancing in the French Quarter last night. They’ll probably still be dancing next week.
Let’s drop in on Preservation Hall and see what they are up to.
The third and final game of this weekend’s 6 Nations matches was between Scotland and France. Jerry Guscott noted earlier in the week that statistically France tends to win the 6 (or 5) Nations in years following a Lions tour. Despite their bruising trip to New Zealand over the winter, which probably left them with as many bruises and the Lions got in South Africa, many people are tipping Les Bleus for the championship this year. On the basis of today’s game, those people are right.
Firstly the French pack totally destroyed the Scottish scrum. Had the Scots not had the excuse of a pitch that was cutting up badly and making keeping your footing difficult Nigel Owens might have awarded a few penalty tries. And of course they out-ran the Scots too. Scotland were defending horribly narrowly and were always vulnerable to quick, wide ball. The stars of the French back line were the cunning little Francois Trinh-Duc, and the amiable, chubby giant, Mathieu Bastareaud, who clearly fell into a cauldron of magic potion when he was a baby and doesn’t know his own strength.
The Scots will be pleased with the performances of Sean Lamont and Beattie, and with the fact that Chris Patterson is still the best kicker in the world. They will be less pleased at yet another match in which they never looked like scoring a try.
As Bill McLaren would have said, they’ll be dancing in the streets of Paris tonight. Here’s hoping that the fleur-de-lis flies proudly over the Louisiana Territory as well. Geaux Saints!
In sport there games that you win, games that you lose, and games that you give away. Wales gave away today’s game against England.
The game turned on an incident about 5 minutes before half time when Alun Wyn Jones was sin-binned for tripping Dylan Hartley. It was a stupid offense, committed right in front of the referee. While Wyn Jones was cooling his heels in the bin, England scored 17 unanswered points. In addition to that, Tom James messed up a golden opportunity for a try, and Stephen Jones and James Hook missed three penalty attempts between then. That’s a total of 33 points given away, in a game that we lost 30-17.
England will be reasonably pleased to have taken their chances when they came, even though all three of their tries were given to them in one way or another: two when Wales were a man down, and the third from an interception. They should be less pleased with how long it took them to score the first try. Their forwards clearly don’t trust their backs with the ball. Possibly the best news for them is that Wilkinson is still at his metronomic best with the boot.
As I feared, Gareth Cooper had a poor game at scrum half, squandering two good scoring opportunities with ill-advised chip kicks and generally giving poor service to the back line. Gareth Williams had a nightmare throwing into the lineout. Both men were replaced in the second half, after which the Welsh team appeared to function more smoothly.
That’s by no means the end of the road for Wales. They have three home games to come, and played well enough against England that I expect them to beat Italy and Scotland. The home game against France, and the away game against Ireland, will be much more of a challenge.
Speaking of the Irish, they opened their campaign against an Italian side lacking their inspirational captain, Sergio Parisse, and as toothless as I have ever seen them. Italy appeared to require a committee meeting each time before releasing the ball from the ruck. If this year’s Ferrari is as slow, Lewis and Jenson will be laughing. Ireland, however, only managed a 29-11 win and will not be happy with their lack of incisiveness.
This weekend sees the most important sporting event of the year. No, not that little game in Miami, though I will be watching that as well (Geaux Saints!). I refer, of course, to the annual Wales – England rugby match.
This year the game is in London, which should help England overcome their natural disadvantage of being, well, English. Also the England side is very much in a rebuilding phase, with many young players looking to establish their reputations. The Welsh side, on the other hand, is stuffed full of veterans of two Grand Slam campaigns. They ought to win. Expectation always brings pressure.
My main worry is at scrum half. Gareth Cooper is the Welsh third choice – Philips and Peel both being injured. He’s a good player but, as I’m sure Will will explain in the comments, Danny Care is a wily fox and proving worthy of being England’s first choice at the position.
My other worry is the referee. As the BBC and Martyn Williams explain, some new regulations have just been handed down regarding how rucks will be policed. Going into the game, the players will be unsure what is legal and what isn’t. They will need to watch the referee carefully and see how he whistles the game. But Wales cannot afford to give away penalties, because if they do then Jonny Wilkinson will kick them, and then we’ll probably lose.
On the bright side, the selection of Tait instead of Hipkiss suggests that England are actually going to try to play rugby rather than mud wrestling, and when they do things that don’t come naturally to them they often get in a terrible mess. We shall see.
While the rest of the IPL was focused on the auction and paying a fortune for the likes of Kieron Pollard, the Royals have been looking around for bargains. They appear to have found one in Hampshire’s Michael Lumb. As those of you who played in Paul Cornell’s fantasy cricket league last year will know, Lumb was one of the stand-out batsmen in the 2009 English season. He’ll be well known to Royals captain, Shane Warne, who used to captain Hampshire, and to his fellow Royal and current Hampshire captain, Dimitri Mascarenhas. He should be an excellent addition to the Royals batting line-up.
In case you are wondering, Lumb did not have to go through the auction because he is not an international player. And of you want to know why such a good batsman isn’t an international – well he was born in Johannesburg and South Africa is already fielding two international batting line-ups (one of them under the cunning pseudonym of “England”).
Meanwhile the player auction took place today. It was no surprise, given his heroics in the Champions’ League, that Kieron Pollard attracted a huge fee. The Pakistani players are reported hugely upset that none of them got picked up, and let’s face it who wouldn’t want the likes of Shahid Afridi and Umar Gul, but with no guarantee that they’d be able to get visas it is not surprising that the team managers were not prepared to take a risk.
The Royals spent carefully, but probably wisely as Warnie will know his two new Australian players very well. I am looking forward to the season. I don’t know what the availability of Smithy and Shane Watson will be, but Ravindra Jadeja has come on spectacularly during his stint in the Indian one-day side so I’m hoping for some heroics from him.
News has come across my desk of a new pressure group that aims to redefine the way that sporting authorities look at gender. It is headed by the openly trans Canadian cyclist, Kristin Worley. The long term aim of the group is to move sport away from division by the artificial, socially-determined category of gender and towards a definition based the abilities of the athletes. Apparently the paralympics work this way — there are different categories of competition based on the level of disadvantage that the athlete’s condition confers.
Somehow I suspect that this will be a very long-term project, but I definitely agree that it is crazy that some accidents of birth are treated as allowable, even though they confer great advantage, while others, because they cause the athlete’s gender to be called into question, result not only in sporting sanctions but public humiliation. If Worley and her colleagues can do something to prevent further occurrences of the sort of treatment meted out to Caster Semenya and Santhi Soundarajan that will be a very good thing.
One of the most impressive things about the Wii is the range of realistic sports that you get with the basic package. Wii Sports Resort adds to this. I’m particularly addicted to the table tennis game, though that is in part because the solo version serves up such interesting opponents – thus far I have played against, amongst others, thiny disguised versions of Catwoman, Darth Vader, Miss Piggy, Michael Jackson, Winne the Pooh, Scooby Doo, a werewolf and Kenny from South Park. In general, however, the attraction of the sports games is that the Wii’s unique interface technology allows you to play them in pretty much the same way as you would play the real thing. Of course the Wii helps you — I would be totally useless at real table tennis — but at least I’m getting exercise.
Anyway, encouraged by such realistic game play, the next thing any new Wii owner is likely to do is to buy some of the specialist sports games on offer from people like EA. Paul Cornell blogs about his experience over Christmas:
Ashes Cricket 2009 on the Wii (complete bloody swizz, you don’t actually use the Wii controller as you would a cricket bat, which one intuitively expects from such a game, and would characterise any cricket game for the Wii that I’d actually want to buy).
Spot on. I made the very same mistake. Given that the basic Wii sports lets you bat in baseball and play tennis, it seems inconceivable that a Wii cricket game would not yet you bat in a realistic manner. And yet it does not. That game isn’t by EA, but the Tiger Woods PGA Golf game is. I stupidly bought that too, and discovered that the golf game in Wii Sports Resort is actually a better golf simulation.
As a side point, the people who design the interfaces to these sports games should be taken out and shot. There’s really no excuse for poor menu design and lack of access to features except in the highly constrained way the game wants to force upon you.
The real problem with Wii games, however, appears to be that the game manufacturers have simply converted their old, keyboard-based games for use on the Wii. This I can understand. It is an economic problem. You don’t want to have to write a completely different game for the Wii when you already have something that works on the Playstation, PC and so on. But that means that there is a gap in the market. Someone out there ought to be producing really good sports simulations for the Wii that use the Wii interface in the way in which it was intended. If anyone knows of such a game, especially if it is a cricket game, please let me know. (And actually I’d love a chance to help design such a game. I have worked in computer games before.)
As an aside, the Wii game that I know of that is actually most like batting in cricket is the “Return Challenge” table tennis game in Wii Sports Resort. The mechanics of hitting a table tennis ball are different, but aside from that it is a very similar psychological problem. You have to face ball after ball; the drink cans placed on the table tempt you to try to hit your return shot in a precise way rather than just playing safe; and the crowd noise can be a big distraction. It is an exercise in concentration. Sir Geoffrey would approve.
Some of you have doubtless been expecting me to say something about the current fuss affecting Welsh rugby. Well, you know, what Gareth “Alfie” Thomas does off the field is his own affair, not that of the newspapers. I’m sure that there are a lot more rugby players who are gay, and I’m very impressed that Alfie has been brave enough to admit to his sexuality in public. The main point of this post, however, is to say a warm “Thank You!” to Will Carling and Clive Woodward. They might be the enemy, but where matters like this are concerned they have also shown themselves to be fine human beings. If only the same could be said for the readers of the Daily Malice.
Cricket’s World Twenty20 Cup was such a success it looks like they are going to do it every year. The main event takes place in the West Indies at the beginning of May. But before that there are qualifiers to determine which two lucky second tier nations gets to play with the big boys. In February there will be a tournament in Dubai. Initially the teams are divided into two group. Group B contains Kenya, Netherlands, Canada and the UAE. Potentially more interesting is Group A which contains Ireland, Scotland, Afghanistan and the USA. That could have a bit of needle.
So, the draw for the World Cup has taken place, and England’s group includes Algeria, Slovenia and the USA. That will be interesting. Two teams go through from each group. By the FIFA rankings that should be England and USA. But whichever team loses their head-to-head will have a tough tournament.
So, there we were, down to the wire at last. Only two teams left: the highly fancied New South Wales Blues, and the rank outsiders from Trinidad & Tobago. Would it be yet another tale of Australian dominance, or a Caribbean carnival?
T&T got off to the best possible start by wining the toss and electing to field. They have chased targets very well in previous games, including their win against NSW earlier in the tournament. They also bowled very well. At one point NSW were 83-6 and looking very shaky indeed. It needed a big match player to step up, and fortunately for the Sydney team they had one. Brett Lee played the innings of his life, scoring 48 to help his side to a final total of 159.
Even then T&T looked favorites. They had chased more than that against NSW before. They had chased more than that against the Cobras last night. All they had to do was keep their cool.
Of course NSW do have close to a full Australian test attack. They have Stuart Clark, Nathan Hauritz, and above all Brett Lee, who has been the standout bowler in the tournament. Lee took 2-10 in his opening two overs, which were actually amongst his worst figures so far.
Fortunately for T&T, no bowler is allowed more than 4 overs in a game, and with Lee rested they set about rebuilding. They kept up with the rate reasonably well, but continued to lose wickets. That brought in their main strike batsman, Kieron Pollard, who immediately set about the bowling. Before long T&T were ahead on run rate and and starting to look good for the win.
And then, disaster. Pollard slightly mistimed a shot off Haurtiz, and who should be there on the boundary to pocket the catch but Brett Lee. From then on T&T were done for, and Stuart Clark masterfully cleaned up the tail to register a 41 run win.
So it is business as usual for cricket: the Australians are World Champions again. But the T&T team should not be disappointed. They performed well above expectations and go home well rewarded. Pollard got a check for $25,000 for hitting the most 6s (home runs) in the tournament, and the team as a whole won $1.3m. That will go a long way in a small island economy. It is great to see Caribbean cricketers strutting their stuff on the world stage again.
As for the tournament, it was a great success. Aside from the rather dodgy Delhi pitch, everything went according to plan. Lalit Modi was beaming with happiness at the presentation ceremony. He said he wants this tournament to rival that other Champions’ League – the one run by UEFA for some silly sport played with the feet. Given the entertainment value that the past two weeks have provided, I think he has a good chance.
And finally, a word about the man of the moment. Everyone knew that Brett Lee is one of the finest bowlers in the world. It was his absence through injury that meant that Australia lost the Ashes in England this summer. When he was fit again the Aussies destroyed England in the one-day series. Today Lee starred with the ball, but was even more of a hero with the bat. He was also named Man of the Series.
He’s a genuinely multi-talented guy. He’s well aware that the career of a professional sportsman is short and has other strings to his bow. He has his own rock band. He has starred in a Bollywood movie. And he has co-written a series of novels for young boys. Naturally they are about cricket, but they are also time travel stories. So Lee is a bona fide science fiction writer.
There will doubtless be a lot of singing in the NSW dressing room tonight, and possibly a few beers drunk as well. To help them out, through the magic of YouTube, here are Brett Lee’s Six and Out rocking along to “Cyclone Sally”.
Yesterday’s semi-final might have been a damp squib, but today’s was a superb match. The Cape Town Cobras won the toss and elected to bat. Both of their big guns, Herschelle Gibbs (42) and JP Duminy (61*), came good; and they set a challenging score of 175. Trinidad & Tobago can thank a magnificent last over by Ravi Rampaul, off which they conceded only 2 runs, for keeping the target that low.
The T&T batsmen kept up with the required rate through most of their innings, and the pressure began to tell on the South Africans. Several catches were dropped, and fielding errors allowed the batsmen to score two when they should only have got one. Even so the result was in doubt right down to the final over. But with the inspirational captain, Daren Ganga (44*), and star player Dwayne Bravo (58*) in fine form they got the win with a whole 4 balls to spare.
There is no rest of the T&T team. The final takes place tomorrow. The good news is that they play NSW Blues, whom they have already beaten once in another thrilling game. Tomorrow one of these two clubs will be crowned cricket’s first ever world club champions. No one outside of Australia will be cheering for the Blues.
