Tag Archives: England

Super Eights – Everything is super about them!


ICC World twenty20 Super Eights

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Day 1 of the Super Eights at ICC World Twenty20, and all of a sudden one feels how beautifully and fittingly written are these lines from Urdu poetry – “Aghaz aisa hai to Anjaam kaisa hoga” (if such is the inception, well, what to expect in the end). ICC World Twenty20 2012 has started to come into its own; super eights on day 1 itself has announced a cricket bonanza, which is ready to unwrap in the next two weeks – big time.

Game 1 of the Super eights between Sri Lanka and New Zealand went to super over after the scores ended in a tie. At one stage when Sri Lanka was chasing, around the 17th over, they were looking like chasing the target easily but some really good seam bowling by the Kiwis lead by Tim Southee made a match of it. Eventually however, a brilliant catch from Dilshan turned the fortunes in Sri Lanka’s favour and made sure they got the first two points.

In game 2, the West Indies showed why they are a big contender to win this edition. All through the 40 overs, what stood out was the West Indian spirit. There was no pressure on them whatsoever. They are one side who truly enjoy their game; the dance moves and the run out warnings from the very special Chris Gayle were titillating enough to make you dance along as well.

England looked a bit out of sorts. Though a late burst from Eoin Morgan who went at a strike rate of almost 200 did bring some hope to the Englishmen but his lone effort wasn’t enough. The surprising thing about the English chase was that they only lost four wickets, which means that they had set batsmen at the crease during their chase, and this to an extent raises some doubts on Alex Hales’s ability to pace his innings. Hales scored 68 from 51 balls and that, for an opener, as per the modern standards is somewhat on the slower side, given the fact that he stayed at the crease for almost the whole course of English innings and that too on the Pallekele batting paradise.

Overall, day 1 was full of excitement with two sides who did their basics better than the other two ending up on the winning side. Day 2 brings us two other very big and important group 2 games from Premadasa, Colombo. South Africa takes on Pakistan in the first of these, so be ready for the all greens battle and the battle of South African pace and Pakistan’s spin. Then late evening, India plays Australia which is a big-big game; the war of words have already begun and the sides are raring to go. The coming week promises a lot and it can only get better from here.

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Duckworth-Lewis, What a relief !


Taken by myself, this morning, at the Sydney C...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ICC World Cup 1992, 2nd Semi-final – England vs. South Africa, Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). SCG was buzzing with capacity crowd. It was March 22 and when rain stopped play for the last time during this match, 22 (off 13 balls) were precisely the runs required for South Africa to make it to the World Cup final. South Africans didn’t know then, that, when play resumes they would be faced with their worst moment after a long 21 years exile from international cricket. When the play resumed, they did know. The large screen at SCG displayed, 22 REQUIRED OFF 1 BALL.

Cricket is primarily an outdoor sport and like any other outdoor sport, a possibility of it being interrupted by rain or bad weather is always on cards. For years, various rules have been applied to calculate targets in curtailed games. South Africans, at SCG, found themselves at receiving end of one such rule. The rule applied during this game was the “best scoring overs” rule. As per this rule, for the amount of time lost due to interruption, no. of overs that the side chasing gets to bat are reduced proportionately. And, the achievable target is arrived at by adding up runs scored in the ‘best scoring’ overs of the previous innings. So, let’s consider an over lasts for approximately four minutes, if 20 minutes are lost due to interruption, a team gets to bat five overs less and they would be chasing a target by including runs from five ‘best scoring’ overs of the first innings. Thus, in such a situation, if five maidens are bowled in the first innings, target for the team chasing remains unchanged, though they lose five overs. At SCG around 10 minutes were lost in that fateful semi-final. Well, some rule, but not quite.

Two English statisticians, Duckworth and Lewis, addressed this problem and provided a beautiful solution that is now being used in all modern day limited over cricket formats. It is scientific, mathematical, logical and thus widely acceptable. The core concept on which Duckworth-Lewis (D/L) method has its foundation is ‘available resources’. Resources in this context means remaining overs and wickets in hand. As per this rule, these two resources, more or less define a team’s chances of chasing down a target. Thus, at a given point of time, if a match has to be abandoned due to rain or any other reason, a potential victory or defeat is assumed to be based on wickets standing and overs remaining. D/L have nicely derived a table in which, if you input remaining overs and wickets in hand, you know how much is a team looking at.

For D/L to apply, a minimum of 20 overs in an ODI game and at least five overs in a T20 game should have been completed. A major criticism of D/L is, that via this rule, result of a game is driven more by wickets standing than by overs remaining, and thus that ‘balance’ between the ‘resources’ is missing. But isn’t it so much better than what we saw at SCG, ahh, such a relief !!! WW6PXY4QQTKV