Australia’s World Cup winning streak bookended by losses to Pakistan

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Australia lost in the World Cup yesterday. Turns out we were there last time that happened, at Headingley in 1999.

That match featured one of the all-time great run-outs with Inzy taking a quick single in the time it took Moin Khan to run two. Nothing unusual in that, but the fact that Moin didn’t notice until the throw was almost in the keeper’s hands was what made it so good. He turned round and saw Inzy casually leaning on his bat at the same end. Why Inzy hadn’t pointed out that there was a problem is a question that only he can answer.

That match pretty much exemplified the Pakistan template for one-day cricket. Sensible batting early on and outright chaos towards the end of the innings and then smart spin bowling and devilish reverse swing to prevent the opposition from batting how you did.

The current Pakistan side is missing the ‘sensible batting’ part of that recipe, but we’ve still been pretty impressed by them during this World Cup. Well, we’ve been impressed by Afridi and Gul anyway. Not sure you can win a World Cup using two players and cobbling something together from the other nine, but it’ll be interesting to find out and they do seem to have a bit of something about them.

As for Australia, it’s no longer wise to judge a side based on its ability to beat them, which says it all. It would be like being impressed by a computer game because it had speech.

5 comments

  1. Daisy and I saw Sourav on that show a few weeks ago while we were still in Southern Asia. Please don’t tell us that his high barnet is a syrup, Tuffers.

    Meanwhile (getting a bit serious here), that Oz v Pakistan result means that England is the only team to go through to the knockout stages unbeaten by a team that has qualified for those stages.

    Had the next round been a super eight in which you take your points against qualifiers through with you, England would be top of the table.

    You’ve got to laugh.

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