The T20 World Cup final is on Channel 4 on Sunday and possibly also Monday

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UK readers are probably already aware of this, but just in case you’re not: Sky Sports have again done the surprisingly decent thing of agreeing to share the broadcast of England v Pakistan in the T20 World Cup final with Channel 4. The match is due to start at 8am on Sunday, UK time.

Whether it actually does or not is another matter. We’ve seen quite a few weather forecasts that differ quite significantly in the detail, but the general gist is that there’ll be a decent amount of rain in Melbourne that day.

It looks like showers rather than the kind of bed-in-for-the-day relentless stair rods we sometimes get on our little island up here in the northern hemisphere. That suggests there should also be dry spells. But then the showers are predicted to be heavy-to-thundery, which suggests a sodden outfield and a lot of ‘inspection at Xpm’ type shenanigans.

If they don’t get the overs in on Sunday, they’ve got Monday as a reserve day. If they make use of that, play could potentially start at 4am UK time – although the weather forecast isn’t much less moist than Sunday. If they still can’t 10 overs a side in even after that, the trophy will be shared. There’s no official word yet on whether they’ll split it left and right, front and back or top and bottom, or whether they’ll just smelt it down so that they can give each team equal weight cubes of metal to hold aloft.

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19 comments

  1. How else could they decide who wins?

    Current favourites in our house include Rock, Paper, Scissors; What’s the time Mr Wolf; Devon-themed Monopoly; and of course ‘The Yes No Game’.

    Buttler and Babar have to give lengthy interviews with Ian Bishop. The first one to say either yes or no loses.

    1. Has to be a version of cricket, I reckon. Pub cricket is what I’d go for – that game for keeping children entertained while driving round the countryside. Number of legs in pub names, you know the one. Load both teams onto a bus, pick a random route by a coin toss at every left-right junction, then drive round the suburbs of Melbourne until both teams are out, which in pub cricket terms means twenty pubs with no legs. Although, this feels more like a test match version – perhaps just twenty pubs per innings is more suited to T20.

      Does anyone know whether this would work in Australia? Do pubs have names like “The Coach & Horses” or “The Sailor’s Arms”? I guess that even a place called something like “Dave’s Bar” would be OK, scoring a steady two runs. They’d have to clarify the rules about “The Sailor’s Arms” beforehand though, to avoid my sister changing her mind about whether this is a sailor (two runs) or just his arms (no runs and out) depending on whether she was batting or not.

      1. We thought we’d managed to get hold of him for you, but it turned out to be someone else.

    2. If only there were an on-line version of cricket top trumps that works. THAT would be a supremely suitable way of determining the winner of a T20 World Cup in my opinion – more suitable even than playing a T20 cricket match.

  2. I don’t know why they insist on playing games in places like Melbourne, where it rains. Manchester forecast is fine for Sunday, although I’ll grant you it might be a bit nippy and the pitch might be granite-like.

    1. Totally get your point, APW, but it would be more convenient from my point of view to relocate the fixture to Lord’s rather than Manchester. The weather is set sunny, 16 degrees centigrade for Sunday…and (just in case you were wondering) … the MCC knows how to put on a cricket match.

  3. Rugby league and union world cups both slip from England’s grasp in a matter of hours.

    This is more like how it’s supposed to feel.

    1. Not sure they’d have been winning the RLWC (Men’s) final against Australia in any event Sam – although the dream is very much still alive in the Women’s and Wheelchair variants, and they did win the PD version, so some silver linings for the English there.

      In other tangentially-Rugby-League-related news, Melbourne seems to be living up to its NRL team’s name

    1. Thought this was rather good at the time my brain invented it. Maybe a bit niche, but if you can’t combine Rugby League insults with cricket legends on this site, goodness knows where is more suitable

  4. ‘Dad, who’s winning? Who’s winning? Who’s winning now? Is it half time yet? Are you going to watch the whole thing?’

    1. I have been keeping an eye on the rain radar for the last four hours…it has consistently suggested that persistent rain might set in at the MCG in about half-an-hour. Now it says no rain until midnight, so I expect it will start heaving it down any minute!

  5. Feel for Pakistan here. Losing Afridi, one of the best three(?) bowlers in the world, and watching the replacement part timer’s over go for 13 in a low-scoring thriller… Heartbreaking.

    Still. Shove it up yer arse.

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