Pakistan celebrate winning the World Twenty20 final against Sri Lanka.
Here are my highlights from an enthralling 17 days of cricket - what about yours?
Seventeen days just wasn't long enough, was it? Or maybe that question proves it was just right: the World Twenty20 has left us wanting more, and for once the next edition - scheduled for spring 2010 in the Caribbean - can't come round quickly enough. To keep you going, here are some quickfire thoughts about the past fortnight and a bit:
1) The Dutch spent the days leading up to their game with England insisting they could spring a surprise. Some of us struggled to conceal our smirks. But we should have known this tournament was touched with gold-dust the moment an apparent wet lettuce of an opening fixture turned into the mother of all banana skins. Stuart Broad may have bowled one of the best death overs of the entire competition, but the pressure did for England. Shenshational!
2) Speaking of glass ceilings, what about the Irish? They hammered Bangladesh and, before the final, came closer than anyone to beating Sri Lanka. Yet the Bangladeshis continue to make a mockery of their Test status while the Irish keep crying out for promotion. They've already lost Ed Joyce and Eoin Morgan. The brain drain could prove crippling.
3) Only one team won all their matches: England. It feels faintly patronising to have to suffix them continually with "women"; it's grating to hear them forever described as "girls". But Claire Taylor's batting - 199 runs for once out off 147 balls - was the most telling contribution on both sides of the gender divide. Now for the Ashes...
4) Was any team's batting more reliant on one man than Sri Lanka's? In the games they won comfortably, Tillekeratne Dilshan scored 53 (off 32 balls), 74 (off 47), 46 (off 39), 48 (off 37), and 96 not out (off 57). In the game they won narrowly, against Ireland, he made 0 off two. And in the one game they lost, against Pakistan in the final, he made 0 off five.
5) As for Dilshan's ramp shot, folks, it just ain't new. The 2003 Wisden Almanack includes an article by Simon Briggs entitled "The 21st-Century Coaching Book". One of the entries ("The ramp") points out that Western Australia's Ryan Campbell, among others, took "the shovel [another piece of improvisation] to its logical extension". But people can be slow to spot trends. After all, pinch-hitting began in earnest with Kris Srikkanth before gaining further legitimacy under Mark Greatbatch in 1992. Sanath Jayasuriya? A Johnny Come Lately.
6) Which reminds us: why is it that so many observers, especially English ones, have only opened their eyes to the possibilities of Twenty20 in the last couple of weeks? Twenty20's seminal moment came last year on a sticky night in Bangalore, but then it's fashionable to bash the Indian Premier League. Still, better later than never...
7) West Indies' batting against Sri Lanka in the semi-finals comes close, but the prize for the most prolonged passage of dumb play goes to England. With storm clouds gathering in their virtual quarter-final at The Brit Oval against West Indies, they went a staggering 56 balls without a boundary - almost half their innings. Perhaps if the captain and coach had been able to agree on the best way to order the batsmen...
8) An esteemed Indian colleague - the Delhi-based independent freelancer and author Gulu Ezekiel - emailed yesterday to complain that Indian cricket had become "a combo of a zoo, a circus and a wh0re house", which the Spin felt was a little harsh on animals, clowns and ladies of the night. After all, not even the Soho & Districts Red-Light XI would have played Ravindra Jadeja at No4. India's failure, incidentally, is not a reflection of the IPL; more a sign that India has now overtaken England as the team most likely to believe its own publicity.
9) Our desire to classify Ajantha Mendis has led to one comparison that just doesn't seem right. England used to play Anil Kumble as a slow-medium inswinger, and the tag has shifted inexorably to Mendis. Yet most of his deliveries go straight on, and two of his wickets against New Zealand came courtesy of leg-breaks. The search for Mendis's dictionary definition goes on.
10) Weren't the crowds great? We've always known India and Pakistan can pack out grounds in England, but the Sri Lankan presence for their semi-final at The Brit Oval was overwhelming. The only sadness was the lack of Caribbean flags at a venue that was once their home away from home. But if we didn't know it before, we know it now: no cricket country on earth does multiculturalism as well as England.
11) Unsung Hero Award: Darren Sammy bowled eight overs in the tournament and didn't take a wicket, but his opening burst of 4-0-24-0 against England after appearing as a last-minute replacement for the injured (and, apparently, far more dangerous) Fidel Edwards was a major factor in the West Indian win that night, while he alone kept Tillekeratne Dilshan in check with 4-0-19-0 against Sri Lanka. Medium-pace can prosper in Twenty20 too.
12) You may remember that piece of fielding from Adam Voges against New Zealand. Well, Sri Lanka took the art of boundary sophistry to a new level. First there was Angelo Mathews leaping back over the rope to save a six against West Indies. Then, in the semi-final, Chamara Silva stayed off his feet, which had been the wrong side of the rope, to push back the ball - only for the third umpire to rule fussily that it had already rolled into an area previously covered by the boundary. Talk about punishing invention.
13) Are we allowed to call them chokers? Or shouldn't we just marvel at Umar Gul's ability to summon up yorkers at will? Still, Albie Morkel really should have come in earlier. Here's to the Caribbean 2010...
1) The Dutch spent the days leading up to their game with England insisting they could spring a surprise. Some of us struggled to conceal our smirks. But we should have known this tournament was touched with gold-dust the moment an apparent wet lettuce of an opening fixture turned into the mother of all banana skins. Stuart Broad may have bowled one of the best death overs of the entire competition, but the pressure did for England. Shenshational!
2) Speaking of glass ceilings, what about the Irish? They hammered Bangladesh and, before the final, came closer than anyone to beating Sri Lanka. Yet the Bangladeshis continue to make a mockery of their Test status while the Irish keep crying out for promotion. They've already lost Ed Joyce and Eoin Morgan. The brain drain could prove crippling.
3) Only one team won all their matches: England. It feels faintly patronising to have to suffix them continually with "women"; it's grating to hear them forever described as "girls". But Claire Taylor's batting - 199 runs for once out off 147 balls - was the most telling contribution on both sides of the gender divide. Now for the Ashes...
4) Was any team's batting more reliant on one man than Sri Lanka's? In the games they won comfortably, Tillekeratne Dilshan scored 53 (off 32 balls), 74 (off 47), 46 (off 39), 48 (off 37), and 96 not out (off 57). In the game they won narrowly, against Ireland, he made 0 off two. And in the one game they lost, against Pakistan in the final, he made 0 off five.
5) As for Dilshan's ramp shot, folks, it just ain't new. The 2003 Wisden Almanack includes an article by Simon Briggs entitled "The 21st-Century Coaching Book". One of the entries ("The ramp") points out that Western Australia's Ryan Campbell, among others, took "the shovel [another piece of improvisation] to its logical extension". But people can be slow to spot trends. After all, pinch-hitting began in earnest with Kris Srikkanth before gaining further legitimacy under Mark Greatbatch in 1992. Sanath Jayasuriya? A Johnny Come Lately.
6) Which reminds us: why is it that so many observers, especially English ones, have only opened their eyes to the possibilities of Twenty20 in the last couple of weeks? Twenty20's seminal moment came last year on a sticky night in Bangalore, but then it's fashionable to bash the Indian Premier League. Still, better later than never...
7) West Indies' batting against Sri Lanka in the semi-finals comes close, but the prize for the most prolonged passage of dumb play goes to England. With storm clouds gathering in their virtual quarter-final at The Brit Oval against West Indies, they went a staggering 56 balls without a boundary - almost half their innings. Perhaps if the captain and coach had been able to agree on the best way to order the batsmen...
8) An esteemed Indian colleague - the Delhi-based independent freelancer and author Gulu Ezekiel - emailed yesterday to complain that Indian cricket had become "a combo of a zoo, a circus and a wh0re house", which the Spin felt was a little harsh on animals, clowns and ladies of the night. After all, not even the Soho & Districts Red-Light XI would have played Ravindra Jadeja at No4. India's failure, incidentally, is not a reflection of the IPL; more a sign that India has now overtaken England as the team most likely to believe its own publicity.
9) Our desire to classify Ajantha Mendis has led to one comparison that just doesn't seem right. England used to play Anil Kumble as a slow-medium inswinger, and the tag has shifted inexorably to Mendis. Yet most of his deliveries go straight on, and two of his wickets against New Zealand came courtesy of leg-breaks. The search for Mendis's dictionary definition goes on.
10) Weren't the crowds great? We've always known India and Pakistan can pack out grounds in England, but the Sri Lankan presence for their semi-final at The Brit Oval was overwhelming. The only sadness was the lack of Caribbean flags at a venue that was once their home away from home. But if we didn't know it before, we know it now: no cricket country on earth does multiculturalism as well as England.
11) Unsung Hero Award: Darren Sammy bowled eight overs in the tournament and didn't take a wicket, but his opening burst of 4-0-24-0 against England after appearing as a last-minute replacement for the injured (and, apparently, far more dangerous) Fidel Edwards was a major factor in the West Indian win that night, while he alone kept Tillekeratne Dilshan in check with 4-0-19-0 against Sri Lanka. Medium-pace can prosper in Twenty20 too.
12) You may remember that piece of fielding from Adam Voges against New Zealand. Well, Sri Lanka took the art of boundary sophistry to a new level. First there was Angelo Mathews leaping back over the rope to save a six against West Indies. Then, in the semi-final, Chamara Silva stayed off his feet, which had been the wrong side of the rope, to push back the ball - only for the third umpire to rule fussily that it had already rolled into an area previously covered by the boundary. Talk about punishing invention.
13) Are we allowed to call them chokers? Or shouldn't we just marvel at Umar Gul's ability to summon up yorkers at will? Still, Albie Morkel really should have come in earlier. Here's to the Caribbean 2010...
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