Crucket

Walking my son to school yesterday, the sun was shining bright, the frost on the grass sparkled and the tuis were singing melodies in the trees. A surprisingly beautiful morning. Had something wonderful happened?

Had it ever: Black Caps crush India. It’s almost enough to get me blogging again.

The Kinks (courtesy of Darjeeling Limited):

So NZ is out of the World T20. On the field they never looked like they were going to win it. However, three wins to two losses is not a bad record. And in the super 8s they finished very close behind Pakistan – a mere 0.414 behind on net run rate, which amounts to about 24 runs, or 8 runs a game in the super 8s.

The real mind fuck though is that Pakistan is going through to the semis with a worse overall record in the tournament. Their 1 win and 2 losses in the super 8s add to a poor 1 win, 1 loss in the first round. So Pakistan is going into the semis having lost more games than they have won.

So what was the advantage of NZ topping their group in the first round? You might expect that it would determine who they play in the super 8s. That isn’t the case however, as a team’s place in the super 8s is determined by their seeding. So topping a group in the first round actually means absolutely nothing. The first round is simply an opportunity for a decent team to be tripped up by a minnow. And it’s fine for the threat of a trip up to be a part of the tournament, but it is nuts for that to be the only purpose of a whole round of the tournament.

It should not have come to pass that a 2-3 record should advance ahead of a 3-2 record. That is a fault in the design of the tournament. And it is easy to remedy: teams should carry over points from the first round. And not necessary all their points, only points earned against teams who also advanced.

Under this scheme, this is how the points in the super 8 would look like this (with two super 8 games still to play):

Compared to the actual points table, this pushes New Zealand and the Windies up and Pakistan and Sri Lanka down.

So New Zealand have crashed out in pool play, with a whimper. Beaten by England with 5 balls to spare.

When it came down to a must win moment, we just couldn’t lift ourselves. We just couldn’t get moving. But that has been the way the whole of our tournament has felt. It felt like we were reaching for something, some sort of rhythm, a groove, some inspiration, some luck, a flash of genius. Something a bit extra. But we never found it, so all we were left with was our base, ground-floor performances.

And without that little bit of extra oomph, genius or luck, our base, non-embellished performances were a little short. My assessment of a par performance is 160 runs, either setting and defending or chasing down. However, the best total we could build at this tournament was 157 against South Africa.

If you are going to do well in a tournament like this, you are going to have to pull something out of the box, preferably when you must win.

Kevin Pietersen is off home just in time to miss tomorrow’s match against New Zealand. How much of a blow is it to England to lose Pietersen?

It’s a big blow. Pietersen is England’s most prolific T20 batsman by a long way. In this tournament alone he has scored 159 of England’s 630 runs– more than a quarter of their runs.

Lucky for them the result of this game is not so important. And we’re lucky in our way too, as this game is a maker or a breaker.

I kinda got the feeling the Black Caps batsmen were playing silly buggers a bit in the win against Zimbabwe, keeping just above the D/L target rather than polishing things off.

So the big expectation on Zimbabwe after their wins in the warm ups came to nothing. And all the talk of Ireland beating up England, washed away. Any hopes of a continuation of the tradition of upsets by minnows now rest on Bangladesh or Afghanistan, playing overnight. Go the minnows!

The Naked and Famous:

Beating Sri Lanka should have booked us a place in the Super 8s. Yay. And no small achievement. A quick look at the records shows that Sri Lanka have been a real banana peel for us. Saturday’s win is our first over Sri Lanka in a grand tournament (World Cup, Champions’ Trophy or World T20) since 1992.

No such worries against Zimbabwe.

What a crazy game. Jayawardene scores an excellent 81, but Sri Lanka only make 136. Then after cruising half way through their innings, the Black Caps start flicking the awesome–suck switch in the middle of every over. Lucky for us, Nathan McCullum had his awesome turned on.

The Phoenix Foundation:

I have gone through my schedule of Black Caps’ fixtures and cleared out any series prior to 2010. The schedule itself is a monthly thing – the details are in the daily schedule, where the action starts at the ICC World Twenty20 2010.

Currently the rest of 2010 is dominated by 21 days of scheduled cricket against Sri Lanka. It also includes 2 ODIs against India, 1 T20i against Zimbabwe (with the tour to Zimbabwe itself has been canned) and warm up T20s against Ireland and the Windies.

What a stoush is developing in India. Come Monday, when the IPL are scheduled to meet, Lalit Modi could be out on his arse. How did the most powerful man in cricket end up so endangered so fast? Well, let me summarise, over-simplify and distort the story that has come to known as the ‘IPL mess’.

With so much money, personalities and politicians involved in the IPL, there inevitably were all sorts of shenanigans going on behind the scenes, hidden and of no concern to the cricketing public. However, Lalit Modi – having learnt nothing from his experience of shaming Chris Cairns, or maybe learning that attacking people over Twitter has no real consequences – opened the curtains somewhat by blabbing on Twitter the names of the stake holders in the new IPL franchise based in Kochi, bought by a consortium of varied interests, which had been brought together by government minister Shashi Tharoor, apparently for no personal gain.

I don’t know why Modi was so bothered by the Kochi consortium, but it is claimed that he offered them $50 million dollars to just walk away. They didn’t take it however, and Modi’s next move was to reveal the consortium’s silent partners by Twitter.

It was thus revealed that a close friend of Shashi Tharoor had been given a small equity in the franchise. Nothing like a bit of openess. A few days later Tharoor resigned on account of the apparent conflict of interest.

Really, you can’t go chasing goverment ministers out of their jobs.

It was around this time that the Indian government opened a massive probe into the finances of the IPL and the franchises.

Target sights were also trained directly on Modi, with the IPL calling a meeting for this coming Monday to discuss Modi’s fate. As his friends began to desert him, Modi desperately tried to defer his doom by climing only he had the authority to call a meeting of the IPL governing council.

By all accounts, the meeting will go ahead Monday and one’s money would be on Modi losing his job. He still has friend however and ousting him will not be easy or tidy.

It is a stoush for the ages.

The Compton Cricket Club:

Very cool.

It isn’t new or anything, but I have just recently been directed to it, and I was most surprised to see what must be Daniel Vetorri in his beardy phase playing drums. Here he is, the original left-arm orthodox gangsta: