Crucket

I’m not getting any results through the main channels, Cricinfo (Scorecard not yet available) or blackcaps.co.nz, but the news is coming in that New Zealand has beaten Bangladesh in their first warm up for the ICC World 20-20.

It seems that the game was an “unofficial” warm up, which pushes it right down the hierarchy. Still, the Bangladeshi fans were quite excited about the match as the last time they played an unofficial warm up against New Zealand was for the last 50-over world cup, in which they beat New Zealand and then went on and tore up their opponents in the official games. Many of the Bangladeshi fans on-line seem to be in England and thus someone was able to provide an almost ball-by-ball coverage on the BanglaCricket forum.

There is no proper scorecard as yet, though I have deduced the following highlights:

Bangladesh: 146/6, 20 overs
Shakib: 35
Riyad: 43

New Zealand: 147/6?, 20 overs – 2 runs scored off a misfield on the last ball
Guptill: 61 (at a good rate apparently)
McGlashan: 35

Here is an account of the match from an observer:

Bangladesh started very well aparently Tamim was on fire right from the word go according to Rabeed bhai. Zunaed is out of form full stop, he needs click soon as Tamim cant carry the opening partnership all the time

Next came Ash who after playing himself in hit beautiful six then gets out in the same over and if I am not mistaken the very next ball. Sakib was not out and joined by Mahmudullah Riyad. And from the very begining he started to middle the ball sweetly . Him and Sakib had good partnership and at onestage he out scored Sakib. Sakib then tried to accelerate the innings and after hitting a boundary was caught at long on by a Kiwi fielder who barely picked it up in front of him, it was a good catch. Mushy then came and gone before I could count the number of sheeps on the far side of the ground. Mahmudullah then top edged the ball , he was unlucky not to get a fifty. Well done to him. Hard work that he put in during picnic cricket last year is paying dividends. Mash was not as explosive as we know him he did not try to through kitchen sinks like he normaly do. He played more controlled shot. Naeem had only few balls to face he hit one good six. New Zealand really bowled tight at the end of the innings other wise score would have reached beyond 155+.

New Zealand innings: In came Gupthill and started hitting one six per over, when the score was 50 I think Gupthill already had 40 odd runs. It was Ash who changed the course of the game ater coming to bowl the 8th over (or was it 9th) of the match. He started with a wide but managed to get Broom out LBW. Styris then was briliantly ran out I was so excited I did not even saw who the fielder was. New zealand then went past 100 run on or around 13 over mark with the loss of 2 wicket. I was already giving up hope and thought the game would be over by 17 or 18 over mark. 2 more wicket fell in the quick succession. it was 111/4 then came Naeem to bowl the 17 th over and his first ball was wide which went for 4. His over cost 13/14 runs. I think that was when we gave the game back to kiwis.
Rasel bowled well for last over apart from that 6 of the 3rd ball. Last ball 2 run needed. Mash slipped while fielding what would have been 1 run became 2.

So, a first-up unofficial warm-up last-ball win. Jolly good.

Elvis Costello:

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).