England’s capitulation to South Africa in the ICC World Twenty20 has once again got the ‘pundits’ in England worried about the Ashes Series. Left to them they would only ever have the Ashes and nothing else. When things start to go wrong they look for someone to blame. The Indian Premier League is a favorite target and those English players playing in it and have got injured then or subsequently it is only because of the IPL. That other England players have stayed fit and also done well is conveniently forgotten.
If there are fragile players in the team who are perennially injured that is hardly the fault of anybody other than themselves and their physical trainers, isn’t it? Australia’s ouster from the tournament could well have been due to the lack of match practice in this format of the game and the performance of the Sri Lankan, Indian, New Zealand and South African teams shows how much playing in the Indian Premier League has helped develop the skills needed in this format of the game.
England depends heavily on the openers to get them off to a start and then for Pietersen to capitalize on that and accelerate the scoring rate. That was seen in the match against Pakistan. The England bowling also is vulnerable unless there is heavy cloud cover in which case the ball will move in the air, which the bowlers are good at exploiting. Their spinners won’t even get into a decent Ranji Trophy team in India.
The South Africans were merciless as they marched to another victory. They had the luxury of taking it a bit easy after restricting the English to only 111 runs so they had to score at less than a run a ball. Kallis batted himself into form but Graeme Smith missed out on the chance to do so. Their fielding was as always out of this world and it saves ten dozens of runs, which are often the difference between winning and losing.
Sri Lanka too will be glad to see that the old gladiator Sanath Jayasuriya struck the ball so well against West Indies and with Dilshan improving and improvising by the day they too are the team to watch out for. New Zealand made short work of Ireland once again emphasizing the gap between the minnows and the established teams.
Ireland didn’t seem to learn from their earlier games and threw away their wickets unnecessarily. If only the commitment to batting and bowling was the same as fielding then they would make swift progress. Losing the first game of the Super 8 stage puts enormous pressure to win the next two but having Ireland in the group makes it a bit easier than the other group where just about any team can beat the other on a given day.
India play South Africa in the last of the Super 8 games and depending on how they have progressed both teams can actually decide who they want to play in the semifinals. But then that is getting ahead of the story, which may still have some unforeseen twists and turns.
