Posted by Shit! What are you supposed to do? This is unprecedented. Don’t know about you, but we celebrated by having quite a bad hangover and having to have an early night. Yay!
Even more strangely, England were the best team in the tournament. The best team doesn’t necessarily win a Twenty20 tournament and the best team has never before been England. It’s all a little unsettling.
We’ve always been of the opinion that while bowlers win you Test matches, batsmen win you Twenty20 matches, because runs are the unit of measurement in this form of the game. However, England’s bowling won the final for them, just as it won them the semi-final.
Specifically, the bowling plans were spot-on. Bowling short at the top order has been England’s tactic throughout the tournament. It makes it that much harder for the batsman to play the ball in front of square and therefore it’s kept the runs down a lot. As Australia’s top order swished desperately and unimaginitively, they were at greater risk of getting out.
If Australia had had a Kevin Pietersen who could sashay down the pitch and drive 93mph deliveries on the up, that might have helped. But they didn’t. Australia’s number three was Michael Clarke, who was on a one-man mission to pick out the fielders and run-out his batting partners.
Bar a bit of a spazz-out when the finish was in sight, England chased down the target professionally, because they knew they could do it.
They made good plans at the start of the tournament. They stuck to them. They gained confidence from the fact that those plans worked and they basically flattened everybody in the latter stages. It’s easy. Why have they never done this before?
England are World Twenty20 champions. Mental.
What is happening to the English cricket team? Next we’ll be doing something really crazy, like winning the Ashes in Australia.
Give Paul Collingwood an OBE
Dead right, KC. Bowlers win everything. They are great.
The Aussie commentators rattled on and on (and on and on) and on about how clever the Aussie team was to have Mike Hussey at #7. He’s just like Adam Gilchrist, they said. He can change a match even when things look impossible, they said. Look at the semi-final, they said, and fear us.
What they failed to realise was that had they had a proper bowler at #7 they wouldn’t have needed Hussey to chase down 190 odd. With a proper bowler at #7 in the final, they might not have gone for 15-an-over for three overs in the middle section. That’s roughly double the starting required run rate, so in effect England gained three extra overs to play with. And as it turned out, they were able to use those exact three overs to perform a lap of honour.
I’m not sure which was worse, listenting to the opinionated/analytical crap that always flows from the oriface that is Nozzar Hussain or that grizzly old ec-con Chappelly trying to dis Broad as a winger just before he held a crucial catch.
I am sick of Nozzar going on about plans and what every one is thinking, someone at Sky please send him to Talkshit/sport, anything but mainstream TV. As for Chappelly why try to make out Australia should be a threat when you have Michael Clarke at 3. I have long thought he is actualy Boyzone’s fifth singer Brian McFadden, who having nothing else to do down under has just realised he has lost his fiance and his cricketing mojo.
England won. They were the best team. No plans no shit just instinctively good cricket.
Hail Lord Collingwood of Shotley Bridge.
Nothing less would be a sufficient honour for him.
Also hail Lords Pietersen of Pietermaritzburg, Kieswetter of Johannesberg, Flower of Bulawayo, …….
Apropos of nothing, but, amusingly, Lord Collingwood of Shotley Bridge is, taken across all 3 international formats, England’s second most capped cricketer ever, and will probably go past Alec Stewart at next year’s World Cup. Not bad for someone who’s seemingly been in a scrap for his place in the side ever since he first appeared.
Congratulations to team England! Apparently they played good cricket.
the guardian sums it up well in it’s headline,
“England lift the world cup!
[ok,it’s only Twenty20.Still…].”
Weighing in on the batsman-at-no.7 debate, it’s pretty clear that relying on part time bowlers has killed Australia and even more so India.
A no.7 faces an average of 7.44 balls per innings in T20.
A no.8 faces an average of 4.73 balls.
All you need at 7 is someone who would probably hit about 10 in 7 balls. By no.8 and below it is irrelevant.
No team should bowl Shane Watson and get away with it.
I’m just back from celebrating artisan beer week in USA so forgive me. Surely all bowlers in T/T are part time, 13 mins cannot be considered a real job. Who is this no 7 batsman that only faces 7.44 balls, he needs to be dropped.
Clearly the Large Hadron Collider has bumped us into an alternate Universe. Very soon, we’ll see a fearsome foursome of English bowlers dominate the Test scene for the next 10 years.
England was the best team. Really? How about a team that went unbeaten till the final and saw off Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, West Indies and an inspired Pakistan again?
England were shit against WI(6 overs 60 runs, face it, it wasnt as unlucky as England supporters make it out to be) and almost lost to Ireland.
Well, maybe they were as good as Oz till the finals, a maybe there buy by no means the clear, best team in the tournament. 2 more overs for Ireland, and they might not even have made the Super 8. And everyone says Pakistan was lucky to make the semis!
Sour grapes come to mind Raj.
Raj,
Go run yourself out!
Well, england supporters are the experts in sour grapes havin tasted ample of it in 35 years so I’ll bow to expert opinion.
Wish england wins the football wc too. Surely, the world will be destroyed by 2012 I that happens? Suits me!