Posted by It ended as world tournament exits so often do: with a day of drizzle in a game they weren’t even playing. England sacked their coach after losing in the semi finals of the last T20 World Cup. Australia failed to make it that far in either of the previous two editions and this time they’ve gone one worse by being knocked out in the group stages. The big dead rubber against Oman is on Friday. We can’t wait to see how they go.
How did this happen?
The boilover against Zimbabwe stands out as the ‘upset’ but Australia’s loss to Sri Lanka is the one we can’t help but marvel at. We’re not sure we’ve seen such total commitment to self destruction since we read the instructions on how to commit seppuku with a frisbee on the Real Ultimate Power website in the early 2000s. (Step 1: Get a frisbee from the store or friend. Step 2: Clean the frisbee…)
To recap, Australia were 104-0 off 8.2 overs, batting first – a period during which Sri Lanka also lost their best bowler to a hamstring injury after he’d only bowled four balls. You need to lose pretty much every single subsequent moment to cede a T20 match from that position and that seems doubly unlikely when you’ve won pretty much every single moment up until that point. But that is nevertheless what Australia achieved. Quite the feat. It’s a game of four quarters, as no-one ever says.
This is of course not something a team can achieve on its own. Sri Lanka deserve huge credit for what took place in Pallekele. At the same time… this is not something a team can achieve on its own. Australia more than did their bit.
It takes two to tango, apparently, but this was no tango. This was one partner doing backflips and one-handed chair flare while the other just flops about like the titular character from Weekend at Bernie’s having invited Marcus Stoinis to open the bowling for the second match in a row.
- Sign up for our email or its weekly counterpart
- Feed the site; back our Patreon
- Buy our book, The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments
The Seppuku ‘instructions’ on that website (note to readers, if you are looking for Seppuku instructions on the internet then please contact the Samaritans, Papyrus, or one of the many other organisations that will be able to help you in a more genuine way) read quite differently depending on whether you assume the author is using the British or American understanding of ‘pissed’.
On the topic of the T20WC, the expanded tournament is all about those lesser sides getting a chance to play the major nations and learn, there’s still hope for the developing cricket nations like Australia to come back stronger next time. Maybe one or two of their players will get picked up by one of the T20 franchise leagues and get the opportunity to play alongside the likes of Dipendra Singh Airee or Shadley van Schalkwyk.
If they work at it they could compete as well as the Netherlands do
The funniest parts of these stories are:
1. England getting the best of the group stage as beneficiaries of an otherwise not funny at all stiuation with Bangladesh
2. Australia being thoroughly outperformed by a side whom England whitewashed 2 whole weeks ago.
3. Every commentator calling Australia a “white ball powerhouse”. Fun fact: they are an ODI powerhouse. In T20 world cups, their general record is 2 finals, 1 win, exactly half as good as England’s
Matthew Hayden has been talking again.
On Australia’s humiliating group stage exit, he says: ‘It smacks of England.’
To be fair to Haydos, it really does.
We truly do reside, rent free – 2005 really did a number on him!
But for the last over/last ball “great escape” against Nepal, England might still be metaphorical-fingernail-biting as I type, wondering whether England might be similarly, unceremoniously ejected at the earliest stage.
T20 tournaments can be a great leveller. There is an element of forgettability about individual matches in this format, but tournaments of this kind have a delicious narrative arc which makes the event as a whole compelling and enjoyable to follow. Australia’s demise in this one is but a juicy subplot in the unfolding story of this tournament,
My first choice of cricket to follow is a well-contested test series, but, beyond those, it is these global short-form tournaments that tend to hold my attention and feed my love of cricket.
Who’d have thought that Zimbabwe would top their group.
Good on ’em.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/cx2gnv5w091o
“In messages seen by the BBC, a senior official from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) indicated to an agent that interest in his Pakistan players would be limited to sides not linked to the IPL.”
I’m not sure I expected things to go from 0 to 100 :*quite* so quickly with these investments in The Hundred but anyone who didn’t expect the IPL investments to come with not just strings, but massive ropes, attached was so naive they’d probably let someone who landed at Lord’s in a rented helicopter promising big bags of money have a massive say in how they run things. And we know there’s no-one at the ECB who’s THAT naive, don’t we……
An interesting angle here versus most other tournaments where this is happening is whether the statistical wonks at the other franchises are factoring this into their value calculations.
It could be significant not just in terms of performance, but also in terms of fan support – especially given that the IPL-linked teams have new names and identities that no-one is really all that attached to (at least not yet). Are the supporters of Pakistani heritage in Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and West Yorkshire going to be happy about their local teams not even attempting to bring in Usman Tariq, Shadab Khan, and co, or are they maybe going to spend their merchandise and ticket funds on a different team instead so they can enjoy those sweet sweet Tariq run-up pauses?