Pakistan

India win Twenty20 World Cup

How can a mere 40 overs of cricket contain so many twists and turns?

The last three or four overs in particular were dramatic dynamite. Commentators would say ‘Pakistan are almost certain to win now,’ one ball, yet find themsleves saying it was ‘India’s game to lose,’ the next.

It was unreal. Pakistan would lose a wicket, look dead and buried and then suddenly clout a pair of sixes. India would watch the ball disappear into the stands a few times and then clean bowl someone.

Joginder Sharma was the poor bastard entrusted with the final over. He’s barely played an international match, so it was understandable when his first delivery was a monstrous wide. Nerves will decide it, we thought.

Misbah-ul-Haq appeared to be immune to the tension when he pounded a gargantuan straight-driven six, but in fact he was the one who succumbed to the magnitude of the occasion, attempting a fairly-ludicrous over-the-shoulder loft down to fine leg which was all the more painful considering there were still three further deliveries and that he appeared to have the ability to put the ball where he wanted (the stands) when playing straight.

We won’t repeat ourself for a third time, but what a brilliant tournament and what a brilliant final.

India v Pakistan, ICC Twenty20 World Cup final at Johannesburg
India 157-5 (Gautam Gambhir 75 off 54 balls, Rohit Sharma 30 off 16 balls, Umar Gul 3-28)
Pakistan 152 all out (Misbah-ul-Haq 43 off 38 balls, Imran Nazir 33 off 14 balls, Irfan Pathan 3-16, RP Singh 3-26)

Twenty20 World Cup final, India v Pakistan

If the proper World Cup was pretty rubbish with lots of things going wrong, the Twenty20 World Cup has pretty much addressed each of these issues.

There’ve been crowds, excitement, few dead matches and they’ve even managed to get the final that all cricket tournaments want – India v Pakistan.

And it’s being played at Monday lunchtime, which is, er, maybe not when finals of major tournaments are usually played, but that’s okay.

Misbah-ul-Haq: a Twenty20 specialist

There’s a difference between being a Twenty20 specialist from county cricket and being an international-standard Twenty20 specialist. If you’re the former, you don’t really qualify for consideration in the latter category. There’s a kind of minimum skill level that’s essential. Ask England.

We mention Misbah-ul-Haq and his handiness for the first time and within a few hours he’s seeing Pakistan home against Australia with a stunning knock of 66 off 42 balls.

Pakistan had fallen to 46-4 after 6.4 overs chasing 165 when Misbah-ul-Haq came to the crease. For some reason Pakistan’s middle order, whoever it may contain, is ever-so-slightly more adept than their top order is incompetent.

In addition to yesterday’s recovery, they’ve come back from 33-3 after 5.5 overs to post 189 against Sri Lanka and 47-4 after 8.5 overs to tie with India on 141.

Wickets are less of an issue in Twenty20 in the sense that it’s fairly unlikely that a side will get bowled out. However, it takes quite an eye to start scoring quickly as soon as you arrive at the crease. It also takes a little of something else to not get flustered as the run-rate rises when your side’s in such a perilous position. Seems like Misbah-ul-Haq’s got the eye as well as the something.

It’s hard to know which statistic is the most useful for Twenty20 batting, but fortunately Misbah-ul-Haq’s top for pretty much all of them. The only batsman with a higher average than his 79 in this tournament is Brendan Taylor (107), but he’s scored fewer runs and at a slower rate.

No-one’s scored more than Misbah-ul-Haq’s tournament total of 158. Mahela Jayawardene has also hit 158 runs, but he’s scored them at a rate of 154.9 runs per hundred balls faced. Misbah-ul-Haq can boast a rate of 159.59 runs per hundred balls and that average of 79 is way above Jayawardene’s 52.66.

Shahid Afridi the bowler

Shahid Afridi seems to be quite the Twenty20 bowler. As skchai said in the comments: “Perhaps that is another aspect of his “Afridiness” – he is only effective bowling to other Afridis (not the members of his Pashtun clan, but rather players who play like him).”

Perhaps the ‘what would I do?’ approach to getting inside the batsman’s head is a major factor in his success – he took 3-18 as Pakistan beat Sri Lanka yesterday.

There’s also his unique bowling style. The shorter the format, the weirder the bowling required it seems. That seems to be the general consensus in international cricket. One over to go? ‘Bowl something weird,’ they all shout. ‘That’ll surprise them’.

80mph leg breaks are pretty weird.

We’re still siding with Pakistan as our tip for the tournament. A limp performance against India has been offset by a realisation. Pakistan’s plethora of all-rounders means they can afford to pick a specialist batsman to bat at eight. Yesterday it was Misbah-ul-Haq who’s got the rare distinction of having scored a Twenty20 hundred. Handy.

India beat Pakistan after a bowl out

Why must they play these matches at pub o’clock on a Friday? It was probably gripping, but we wouldn’t know because the only gripping we were experiencing was from our own hand around various overpriced European wheat beers.

The last word in that sentence rather explains the ham-fisted punnery that precedes it.

Shahid Afridi starts his World Cup

Because the Twenty20 World Cup is Shahid Afridi’s, surely.

Against Scotland yesterday, he hit 22 off seven balls, which is actually useful in Twenty20 cricket and then took 4-19, which is useful in any form of cricket.

We originally thought that Twenty20 cricket wouldn’t show Afridi in his best light. Indeed we still do. The whole point of Shahid Afridi – and he might disagree with us on this – is that he plays in that ludicrous manner whatever the form of the game and whatever the match situation.

In Twenty20, with everyone else playing the same way, Shahid Afridi’s essential Shahid Afridiness is diluted. In Test cricket he stands alone. In Twenty20 he’s less of a one-off.

On the other hand, who in world cricket has had more practice playing this way than Shahid Afridi? No-one. Because Shahid Afridi’s been using Test cricket and conventional one-day internationals as net practice for the last ten years.

We’re backing Pakistan (as well as England) in this tournament. Why? Because of their consistency and reliability, that’s why. No, it’s actually because we think the Pakistanis have grown up with this kind of cricket and might therefore have a slight advantage.

Shahid Afridi comes from the great Pakistani tape ball tradition, where you try and slog a tennis ball, which has been semi-taped for added weight and potential swing, for as many runs as possible in as short a time as possible and the only way to stop a batsman is to get him out. Perfect preparation for Twenty20 cricket.

Shoaib Akhtar attains fiftieth headline since he last played a game

At least the recent news proves that Shoaib can still hold a bat. We were starting to wonder whether he was actually a cricketer at all or just some sort of soap opera character planted to raise the profile of the Pakistani national side.

We’ve included a picture of him as he appears in Brian Lara Cricket because that’s about the only place you’re ever likely to see him on a cricket field.

This latest incident, as far as we can make out, consists of Shoaib Akhtar twatting Mohammad Asif in the leg because Shahid Afridi called him names. Not sure why Mohammad Asif has to bear the brunt of this. We’re guessing he just felt left out of the drama and dived to take a blow on purpose.

One thing we are sure about is that the BBC’s headline is so fitting, you wonder why it’s never appeared before: “Pakistan tell Shoaib to ‘shut up’”

Abdul Razzaq retires

Wizened, 27-year-old, schizophrenic batsman cum solid, dependable bowler, Abdul Razzaq, has retired from international cricket.

There are two ways of looking at this. The first way is to say that he’s had a big barny with the Pakistani cricket board.

This might have started because he was talking to the upstart Indian 20 over league causing him to be dropped from Pakistan’s Twenty20 World Cup squad, or maybe Razzaq’s been talking to the breakaway Indian Cricket League as a result of being dropped from Pakistan’s Twenty20 World Cup squad.

Either way, it’s just one of those intermittent tiffs that Pakistan players have with their board and he’ll be welcomed back with open arms before the week’s out.

The second way of looking at it is to say that the same thing’s happened as above, only Abdul Razzaq is never in a million years 27, he’s far, far older and has therefore genuinely retired. If we’re older than Abdul Razzaq, then Geoff Boycott’s a sit-on-the-fence, indecisive southerner who can take a joke.

On the subject of Boycott, if Razzaq truly has retired it’s only right that we laud him in some way and for us, the defining characteristic of Abdul Razzaq’s cricket is his unique ability to bat like Geoff Boycott’s even-more-boring twin in Test cricket, yet miraculously transform into an over-caffeinated Shahid Afridi in one-day cricket.