The other 20-20 tournament
So now that the IPL is over and the best 20-20 team has been found (congratulations Deccan Chargers), the rest of the world will play a little tournament, about half as big as the IPL and largely featuring players not good enough to be considered for any IPL team. It should be a bit of a lark. And it starts quite soon – the first match is Friday of next week. However, there are also a whole bunch of warm up matches, starting tomorrow in fact, against Bangladesh.
I have added the Black Caps’ schedule for the ICC World 20-20 in my Schedule section. It’s impossible to know who we’ll be playing after the first round, so I have listed our second round matches in parentheses with all our possible opponents listed. I’ll update it as the tournament progresses.
My expectation is that we’ll get knocked out in the semis, because we almost always seem to get that far. This expectation is not based on current form or our preparations however. As my previous post shows, our star players are not at their best. Our coach is getting tips from one of cricket’s loopiest coaches, John Buchanan. And the team is spending their preparations faffing about on a country estate (admittedly with a cricket pitch modelled on The Oval).
May 26th, 2009 at 2:49 am
Moles didn’t seem to be a dumbass during the India – NZ series; so he probably was trying to see what NOT to do. McCullum seems to be running into form at the right time. Ross Taylor too picked up form in the latter half of the tournament. Vettori and Mills should do well in English conditions. Ryder though gives cause for worry. As for Oram … Is he really good enough to be picked for NZ? And is Styris in the T20 squad?