I'm always on the lookout for articles about cricket in unusual places, and this is a corker – ‘How Cricket Saved Sri Lanka’ by Shehan Karunatilaka from last Sunday's Observer Magazine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/13/how-cricket-saved-sri-lanka?INTCMP=SRCH
The ICC has been savaged by almost the entire cricket-writing fraternity for its decision to make the next World Cup, in Australia and New Zealand in 2015, a ten-team competition.
Instinctively I want to support the Associate nations too, who will now be deprived of a chance to compete at cricket’s top table. I even almost joined this Facebook group.
But then I looked at the facts, and, for perhaps the first time ever, I sided with the ICC. Only one of the lesser teams has actually made any positive impression in this tournament – Ireland. The rest have been mostly hopelessly outclassed.
Match 2 set the tone – New Zealand needing only eight overs to overhaul Kenya’s risible score of 69 - and it hasn’t got much better since. Apart from Ireland, of course.
The presence of Canada at cricket’s premier tournament reminds me of the 2000 Rugby League World Cup, which included a team called New Zealand Maori. Like both codes of rugby, there is no point in cricket trying to pretend that it is a world game - comparisons to the behemoth that is FIFA’s Football World Cup are pointless.
And it should be remembered that while the ICC are removing four slots from the 50-over World Cup, they are adding four to the 20-over version. The shorter the game, the more likely it is that the lesser-skilled team will win.
It pains me to say it, but, for once, the short-sighted, money-grabbing buffoons of the ICC may have done something sensible. The only danger now is that the World Twenty20 might lose its concentrated thrill. But that surely is a risk worth taking.
So England, somehow, beat South Africa in Chennai by six runs. At one point, South Africa, chasing just 171 to win, were 124 for 3.
Fantastic, you may think. Yet another tight game at the World Cup. What more could you want from a game of cricket?
Well, quite a lot apparently. Simon Mann on Test Match Special said the pitch was not good enough. Jonathan Agnew went as far as saying that he hoped we wouldn’t see a similar pitch for England’s remaining group games, against Bangladesh and the West Indies.
But surely we must get away from thinking that the best pitches are those that are just good for batting. Aren’t the best pitches those that give an equal opportunity to both bat and ball?
And I think we came closer to that today in Chennai, than we did in the high scoring tie against India in Bangalore.
There was a cricket-themed letter in the Daily Telegraph last week. I haven’t found it online, so have reprinted it here in full.
SIR - Why do some of the England cricketers not shave on match days?
Gillian Johnson
Lodsworth, West Sussex
That was it – the entire letter. In a week that saw the World Cup come alive, in a week that Ireland beat England, and England tied with India, in a week of hat-tricks and hundreds, all Gillian Johnson from Lodsworth, West Sussex could think to write about was shaving.
It’s so pathetic, it’s brilliant.
There’s a very good article on the World Cup in today’s Independent by James Corrigan.
Bored yet? Or, like me, are you refusing to tune in until the quarter-finals, some time after the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival and a little before Easter?
I said something similar in my last post on this blog.
However, Mr Corrigan forgets one important thing in his criticism of the pared-down World Cup proposed for 2015.
Upsets in cricket are few and far between. He says that the ICC should ‘take a leaf out of Fifa’s book’, but there is a huge difference. The weaker side sometimes wins a football match. It almost never wins a cricket match.
I did my best to get excited about the World Cup, I really did.
I enjoyed listening to the tournament’s opener yesterday between India and Bangladesh. I even stayed up to watch the highlights, marvelling at the power hitting of Tamim Iqbal and a one-legged Virender Sehwag.
But the results of games 2 and 3 have quickly knocked on the head any thought that this tournament could be something more than a drawn-out, bloated cash cow, designed purely to ensure that the leading teams don’t get knocked out early.
In case you missed them, this is what happened earlier today:
Kenya 69 v v New Zealand 72/0 (8 ov)
New Zealand won by 10 wickets (with 252 balls remaining)
Sri Lanka 332/7 v Canada 122 (36.5 ov)
Sri Lanka won by 210 runs
And we still must sit through another 39 games spread over more than a month before reaching the quarter-finals. My heart sinks.
Some possible reasons why England have never won the World Cup.
Apart from that, England have done really well at the World Cup.
Although I have recommended many books on this blog over the years, I have never, as far as I can remember, included among those recommendations anything by Lee Child or J.K. Rowling. There is a first time for everything.
In conjunction with charity Room to Read, the ICC asked one player from each team at the World Cup for their favourite book. These were the results:
Shane Watson (Australia) - Open by Andre Agassi
Tamim Iqbal (Bangladesh) - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
Zubin Sukari (Canada) - Life by Keith Richards
Luke Wright (England) - Goosebump Series by R L Stine
Virat Kohli (India) - Open by Andre Agassi
Ed Joyce (Ireland) - 1984 by George Orwell
Steve Tikolo (Kenya) - Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Peter Borren (Holland) - Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
Kane Williamson (New Zealand) - Jack Reacher Series by Lee Child
Shahid Afridi (Pakistan) - Fazail-E-Amaal by Muhammad Zakariya Kandhlawi
Wayne Parnell (South Africa) - The Stand by Stephen King
Sulieman Benn (West Indies) - Supercat: The Authorised Biography of Clive Lloyd by Simon Lister
Graeme Cremer (Zimbabwe) – It’s Not About The Bike by Lance Armstrong
The most startling thing about all this is not that Tamim Iqbal’s favourite read is a children’s book. The most startling thing is that Steve Tikolo is still playing for Kenya.
